gay marriage

The Maine House of Representatives today voted (89-57) to enact L.D. 1020, also known as the Equal Marriage Act, which essentially would extend marriage rights to same-sex couples in the Pine Tree state.  Late last week the Maine Senate also passed the bill, and it is widely expected that Governor John Baldacci will sign it.

The only thing that can potentially stop same-sex marriage coming to Maine at this point is the "people's veto" - a Constitutional mechanism that allows the voters of the state to reject a law passed by the legislature.

This means that Maine is about to see a very "Proposition 8" style campaign come to their back yards, and are about to be inundated with commercials, phone calls, websites and door-knocking activists lobbying for a yes or no on a veto.

But more than that, for the first time in a long time, it will provide a chance to watch how a social wedge issue impacts politics in the northeast. 

Sometimes, election years get focused on certain races to tell the story of the cycle. It is too early to tell what the stories of the next cycle will be, but here are two possibilities.

In Pennsylvania, recently re-minted Democrat Arlen Specter has said that he is not shifting his position on card-check, aka the Employee Forced (nee Free) Choice Act. SEIU and AFL-CIO are already pressuring Specter to cave by, among other things, encouraging Rep. Joe Sestak to run against him, in a race in which card-check would be a central debate.

Ironically, the 200,000 people that became Democrats, making Specter's GOP primary impossible, are likely Specter voters in a Democratic primary. As the Democrats have become more affluent, moderate tolerant, and less labor-dependent, the power of organized labor may not be so large.

What if the Democratic primary became a referendum on card-check for Democrats?  How important -- really -- is card check to Democrats? With Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, etc., all weighing in on the anti-card-check side. Wouldn't that be funny. Wouldn't a Specter/card-check victory be a decisive defeat for the unions? This race could become nationalized in much the way that the Lieberman race was in 2006.

Similarly, I can see a fight in New Hampshire over gay marriage in the general. The legislature has passed easily reconcilable bills that legalize gay marriage legislatively. It is likely that the governor will neither sign nor veto them, bringing the law into effect.

But New Hampshire is different than Massachussets and Iowa, where gay marriage has been created by judicial fiat and seems unlikely to be reconsidered due to the ballot initiative processes. It is also different than neighboring Vermont, which just legalized gay marriage by legislative action. This is a dead issue in Vermont.

But you could imagine a battle in the general election in New Hampshire over gay marriage. Democrats had not controlled the state legislature since 1874, and some of these seats could swing back. After all, in 2006, we lost, as Time put it,  "91 state legislature seats, six of [our] 16 state senate seats and both [our] congressional seats". And gay marriage would undoubtedly play a role in a number of swing seats around the state and be a nationalized campaign. Money would flood in from around the country for both sides.

My gut is that gay marriage will not be a compelling issue in New Hampshire, but this will be the only serious opportunity for pro-traditional marriage forces to defend their position at the ballot box. They probably cannot afford to pass it up.

Aside from all the questions about the ability of the GOP to comeback and the future of the redistricting process, 2010 could be quite fascinating.

The gossip blogger sent DMCA takedown notices for a YouTube video because it shows three seconds from his video blog. But does the ad constitute fair use?

By the time YouTube removed an ad from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) due to a DMCA takedown request, the video had already received thousands of views. The takedown notice had been sent to the video sharing site from representatives of Mario Armando Lavandeira -- who blogs under the pseudonym Perez Hilton -- and claimed that because the ad features about three seconds of footage from Perez's video blog, it violates his copyright. Representatives also sent a cease and desist order on Friday to NOM demanding that the organization -- well known for its opposition to legalizing gay marriage -- stop playing the ad in television markets.

The ad in question -- which lasts about a minute -- features comments from Miss California Carrie Prejean in which she states that marriage "should be between a man and a woman," a comment directly followed with a clip of Perez calling her a "dumb bitch." (an email requesting comment from Perez for this article was not returned). The ad ends by accusing proponents of same sex marriage of trying to "silence opposition" rather than debating the issue.

Today I spoke to Brian Brown, executive director of NOM, and he labeled the takedown request and cease and desist demands "completely bogus" and said that his organization plans to fight back against them.

"I don't know people's motivations, but it seems pretty clear that Perez is embarassed about the fact of what he said," Brown told me. "There's no other reason of why he would try to take it down, because clearly he's going to lose under well established fair use rules. It's clearly fair use. I don't know any lawyer who would look at this with a fair mind who would say otherwise."

The organization's lawyers have already sent both a letter to YouTube asking it to reinstall the video and a reply (PDF) to Perez rejecting his copyright claim. But though it's still not clear whether YouTube will comply with the request, at least one conservative blogger has defiantly uploaded the ad onto his own YouTube account and said he'd fight any copyright claims if Perez's lawyers came after him.

"Ultimately we just filed the response and I think [the video] will continue to be up," Brown said to me. "I think that it's really laughable. [Perez] is the one who went after Carrie. He went after Miss California, he put it up on a public blog. If he didn't want people to see it, then why did he do it? And now I think he realizes that people don't like the fact that Miss California speaks her mind and has to be the subject of attack by Perez Hilton. And it doesn't look good for him. So clearly it's not that hard to figure out. He doesn't want it up because he's embarrassed by it."

I asked Brown whether he'd heard that bloggers were protesting by uploading the video on their own. He said that he had seen that and he was glad that they were doing so, but that he was still frustrated by YouTube removing the video because it means they would have to redirect all the links on the NOM website, which can be an inefficient process. Though he placed most of the blame on Perez for sending the DMCA takedown, he said he's at least a little bit frustrated by YouTube's unwillingness to substantiate claims from copyright holders and evaluate whether a clip constitutes fair use.

But Ben Sheffner, a copyright attorney who has been covering this issue on his blog, says that it's not that simple. And he should know -- he previously worked for 20th Century Fox, where a significant part of his job was sending DMCA takedown notices to video sites like YouTube. He also served as special counsel on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, where he had to respond to DMCA takedowns sent by news organizations like Fox News, which claimed that McCain couldn't use its footage in his campaign ads.

"I would say this," Sheffner said in a phone interview. "Virtually all of the blame for the bogus takedown notice goes to the sender of the bogus takedown, meaning the copyright owner -- Perez Hilton in this instance. There is an argument to be made that the host -- meaning YouTube or whomever it is -- should evaluate the notice and see whether an issue is really fair use before it's taken down. But if they don't do that, I'm sympathetic to their reason, and they have several reasons.

"One of them is they get so many takedown notices that they don't have the resources to do an analysis on each one. And for a company like YouTube, I'm very sympathetic of that. They have hundreds of thousands of takedown notices every year. It would be extremely difficult. But as long as they get an facially valid takedown notice, meaning it sort of includes the required information, they'll take it down automatically."

The other reason, he said, was that the way that the DMCA was written is that a host site is only protected from lawsuit if it complies with the takedown expeditiously. This means that the site does not have the time to evaluate the thousands of takedowns submitted every year and yet still protect itself from lawsuits.

As of this writing, the original NOM ad is still removed from YouTube, so it remains to be seen whether the Google-owned company will reinstate it. But this case will likely be closely followed by copyright activists who are wary of media personalities who use copyright claims to silence legitimate criticism.

"It's a very disturbing development," Sheffner said. "I consider myself someone to be a strong supporter of copyright and I don't take a particularly broad view of fair use compared to some people, but the uses that we're talking about here -- it is very clearly fair use. It's fully non-commercial, it's political, it's extremely short, and it really doesn't do harm for Hilton's video blog. If people are less likely to support Hilton and his positions after watching the National Organization for Marriage ad, that's too bad, the law does not recognize that as a sort of harm that copyright is meant to protect."

Simon Owens is a media journalist and social media consultant. Email him at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com or read more of his writing at his blog

McCain strategist Steve Schmidt thinks that the GOP risks becoming the religious party (as if it isn't already.)

Fox News reports:

John McCain’s top adviser from the presidential campaign urged fellow Republicans on Friday to warm up to gay rights and warned that the GOP risks becoming the “religious party” with its opposition to same-sex marriage.

Steve Schmidt, in his first political appearance since the election, spoke at the Washington, D.C., convention for the Log Cabin Republicans — a grassroots group for gay and lesbian Republicans.

He urged Republicans, in the near-term, to endorse civil unions and stop using the Bible as rationale for gay-marriage opposition.

“If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party,” he said. “And in a free country a political party cannot be viable in the long-term if it is seen as a sectarian party.”

Schmidt, whose sister is a lesbian and who supports same-sex marriage, said he understands the Republican Party probably won’t reverse its resistance to same-sex marriage anytime soon.

But he suggested that the party will be increasingly marginalized if it sustains that opposition long-term.

   With my home state's Supreme Court making it’s now famous decision the other day, gay marriage is on the cusp of the lip's of many. A few days before the gay marriage decision, I was thinking about as Young Republicans, what do we want of the world? What do we want to see? What do we want our image to be? A thought from the brilliant William F. Buckley came to mind. He described people whom he viewed as "Small C Conservatives" and "Big C Conservatives." In our modern political climate, where our party has been hijacked by the religious right, Mr. Buckley's words were like a gust of fresh air. Buckley is my new hero. Plain and simple. According to the father of National Review, a Conservative (or "Big C") is one who concerns themselves with fiscal issues and stands as a libertarian on the social ones. This is the true follower of the ideology. As for gay marriage, I'm going to take Mr. Buckley's advice and forget it. I've got a U-Bill due Tuesday. 

Chris Cillizza has argued that the Iowa Supreme Court decision that established gay marriage might disadvantage moderate candidates in the 2012 GOP primary. Cillizza notes that Heartland Iowa, a lefty Iowa blog, lays out a timeframe that would include a November 2011 ballot initiative that Nate Silver seems to think would be close, but the pro-traditional-marriage forces would prevail. (I have to say, I wonder what the presence of married gay couples does to his model)

UPDATE: This even happening would require getting it on the ballot, which would require the cooperation of the Democratic legislature. I kinda doubt that'll happen, don't you?

Anyways, back to Cillizza:

Assuming that time line is right, the fight over the constitutionality of banning same sex marriages would fall right in the heart of the run-up to the 2012 presidential caucus.

And, with the Republican caucus typically dominated by social conservatives, you can imagine the long-term impact today's ruling could have on the presidential jockeying.

At first glance, the decision should help candidates -- like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who are closely aligned with the social conservative wing of the Republican party.

He then argues that this could really hurt Jon Huntsman:

One person who could potentially be hurt by today's ruling is Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) who has staked out a moderate position on the issue -- expressing his support for civil unions earlier this year despite the fact that large numbers of Utah voters oppose the idea. "I'm a firm believer in the traditional construct of marriage, a man and a woman," the governor told the Deseret News. "But I also think that we can go a greater distance in enhancing equal rights for others in nontraditional relationships."

Let me offer another thought. This could lead to a further minimization of the Iowa Caucus. My understanding is that Mitt Romney, who must be considered the front-runner, is already trying to figure out how to avoid Iowa or somehow reshuffle the deck. A number of candidates could reasonably try to skip it.

Iowa Republican Party politics will be very, very interesting over the next couple of years. I expect this to be ask much solved by the rules guys and party officials as by actual voters. But that's really the point of caucuses, isn't it?

Crossposted at The Rockefeller Republican.

California, the "Land of Fruits and Nuts", sided with the GOP on election day and voted For Proposition 8 banning gay marriage.  Think about this for a second-the most liberal state in the union agreed with the Republicans on a social issue.  African Americans who overwhelmingly voted for Obama crossed over from the Democrats side and joined with the Republicans farther down the ballot.  Gay marriage bans also won in Arizona, Arkansas, and recently blue state Florida. Many states in past elections have also passed these same sex marriage bans. What does this mean?  Much of the nation does not support gay marriage, and the GOP is vindicated on this issue. 

But there is another story here.  When the Soviet Union collapsed many people lost sight of the dangers in the world and turned their focus to other matters.  Military budgets were reduced, the national security issue lost its importance in the world, and economic partnerships were more important than military ones.

That is what will probably happen with gay marriage.  As same sex marriage bans are passed all around the country, regular people are not going to be threatened by it as much as they were.  With an iron clad state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage why would gay marriage be a voter concern?  Concern will instead be passed to other issues like the economy, crime, and taxes. 

The GOP has won many gay marriage battles, but it is time for them to reassess this issue and move to more pressing voter concerns.

By the way...the people of San Francisco didn't name that sewage plant after Bush, and they didn't make prostitution legal. 

Frank Schubert has been involved in over 30 ballot initiatives in his lifetime but he’s never experienced anything like Proposition 8. Yesterday, I was asked to be part of a blogger conference call with Schubert who heads up the Yes on 8 movement.

Bottom line: This race is almost over. Tensions are high. Expectations are tempered but the general feeling is that Proposition 8 will prevail.

Read the whole inteview here.

photo credit: newyorkblogPodcast Show Notes

On Obama's "Lipstick on a Pig" gaffe coupled with a subtle question of whether Palin can handle the VP job with five kids.

Hope and Change, a new post-partisan politics trying to dig up dirt on Governor Palin. (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.)

More new tone, Obama's honor suggesting that John McCain has no honor.

(Gap in Audio.)

What does it take to get dismissed from the Obama campaign? 

D0es Obama need to follow Olbermann's advice and get angrier? (Hat Tip: Director Blue.)

Obama would consider holding off on increasing taxes on the rich to avoid hurting the economy.

Obama regrets "above my paygrade."

Obama would have considered joining the military if only there were Vietcong to fight.

Obama's gazebo to nowhere.

Washington Post gives credit where credit is due: Palin has moved Alaska's Natural gas pipeline along. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Obama claims Palin didn't end bridge to nowhere, the Alaska Democratic Party website disagreed but then deleted the page before re-adding it. (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)

Another day, another manufactured scandal: Sarah Palin took per diems allowed by law, less than she was entitled to, and less than her predecessor.

Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) urged to step down by House Republicans.

Liberals try and use lawsuit to shut down talk radio. (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.)

California marriage licenses dump husband and wife for Party A and Party B.

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