Wherein Lies The Blame

A new study finds that race was not the deciding factor of California's Prop 8 passage (emphasis mine).

Although support for Prop. 8 in the African-American community had been pegged as high as 70 percent by one previous postelection survey, this study — which not only reviewed pre- and postelection polls, but also crunched precinct-level election results and census data from Alameda, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego counties, in which two-thirds of the state's African-Americans reside — found the number was between 57 percent and 59 percent.

And that number is more about religiosity than race, study co-author and New York University assistant professor of politics Patrick Egan said. While higher than the level of support among white and Asian-American voters, it's due to the higher rates of African-American church attendance: Fifty-seven percent of African-Americans attend church at least once a week, compared with 42 percent of whites and 40 percent of Asian-Americans, he said.

Unfortunately, superstition and misplaced allegiance to the corrupt sages of a compromised ideology trumped personal relations with the gays.

Even personal relationships with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people paled in comparison to these factors, said study co-author Kenneth Sherrill, a political-science professor at Hunter College in New York City. Although two-thirds of California conservatives said they know or are related to LGBT people, four of five conservatives supported Prop. 8.

But hey--we've all known for years that our conservatives aren't really conservative (much less libertarian) anymore. Let's give it up for Bob Barr, the--still thinking--conservative come libertarian author of DOMA, who now supports its repeal:

In effect, DOMA’s language reflects one-way federalism: It protects only those states that don’t want to accept a same-sex marriage granted by another state. Moreover, the heterosexual definition of marriage for purposes of federal laws - including, immigration, Social Security survivor rights and veteran’s benefits - has become a de facto club used to limit, if not thwart, the ability of a state to choose to recognize same-sex unions.

Let's be clear: we have a federal government dictating what states should do, and states dictating the rights of a minority through the votes of the majority. All over religious-based sexual hang-ups concerning tax-paying citizens who want the same privileges afforded their civic equals.

No one reads history anymore...