There are two really wonderful surprises for me in Arizona politics today. First, Harry Mitchell defeated six-term incumbent douchebag J.D. Hayworth in the 5th District.

But more importantly, the people of Arizona voted down a horribly oppressive anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment that would have not only banned gay marriage, but would have banned civil unions or anything conferring the rights of marriage by the state, AND banning private companies from extending domestic partnership benefits to unmarried couples. The idea of this, the most disgusting anti-gay discriminatory amendment that I've yet seen, passing made me physically sick. But the people of Arizona, as conservative as they are, enough of them saw through his piece of hate legislation to the truth of what it meant and voted it down 51-49%.

http://www.azsos.gov/results/2006/general/BM107.htm

To my knowledge, this is the first time that any anti-gay marriage ballot initiative has failed to pass in any state. I know that the only reason it didn't pass was because the authors overreached and tried to take away rights that they had no business even considering removing, but today I don't care.

Justice has prevailed, for once. I'm very, very proud of this result.

Marriage is gay, anyway

Banning domestic partnership benefits? Isn't that unconstitutional?

Maybe. Why would it stop them from trying?

Because the Bible doesn't want them to stop?

I think it's because they don't want the male prostitute that they're fucking on the side to try to get any more money out of them.

But we also voted overwhelmingly for that minimum wage increase, so maybe we just got lucky on the others, eh?

And wft is with people voting for increased property tax?

It appears as though Arizona got the liberal vote out.

Unfortunately in Virginia, we voted to ban same sex marriage into our constitution yesterday.

My redneck county was 80% in favor of that amendment.

I too was very surprised at the percentage of people who voted against the "Protect Marriage" proposition, and it's good to see. It goes to show that AZ is becoming a more diverse state, and isn't the Republican stronghold it once was. The Harry Mitchell win doesn't surprise me much, since his district does represent a more liberal-part of the state and he was ahead in most of the polls. But I thought the Kyl/Pederson race would be closer than it was, especially with Kyl's lead steadily dropping into single digits as the election came closer.

But overall I'm really happy with this election. the "Protect Marriage" prop. failed, the voting lottery failed, the ban on smoking in restaurants passed, as did the pre-school programs, banning small-cages for domestic animals, and raising the minimum wage. All the illegal immigrant laws passed though, but that comes as no surprise to me.

At least Boise rejected a move to put a Ten Commandments monument in a park!

One win out of 7 states. That's pretty shitty.

It's one more than has ever happened before.

The longest journey begins with one step.

Very true, but it's still disappointing.

The most disappointing for me was that it passed in Wisconsin. Even more so, there were only two counties where it didn't carry. Dane County (Madison) where it fell 2-1, and LaCrosse County where it failed by about 20 votes. It even passed in otherwise very liberal Milwaukee County.

All results aside, we are still living in a redneck nation.

It seems Eau Claire county is liberal as well because of the university there but it must have passed there. For shame. I would have been one more vote against the amendment if I hadn't moved 7 months ago.

Does anyone have a good link about the constitutional arguments for/against a gay marriage ban? I would think the federal government has zero authority over such things. Outside of contract recognition what authority do states have?

I'd also like to opinion surveys broken down by gender/class/race, I can't really search for things like that here at work.

here in MA we had a marriage protection amendment making its way through the house and sanate...but now that we have a new gov and some new reps, the local news stations are reporting that it now does not have enough support to make it to the 2008 ballot as "planned".