...but I felt compelled to make a few comments this afternoon after the last couple of days of seeing Prop 8 threads melting down as I browsed through the Latest Discussions page.
First, a little in the way of introduction. I live in California... Milpitas to be exact. I did not vote on election day (put away the pitchforks, Canadian citizen) but obviously living here and being someone who actually does pay serious attention to politics I've been fairly well exposed to the battle surrounding the election. I drove by both "Yes" and "No" on Prop 8 signs coming to and from work pretty much every day. I was bombarded by idiotic television advertisements. About a week before the election coming out of a local restaurant with my wife someone on the way in was flaunting a shirt proclaiming that marriage was meant to be between one man and one woman... I restrained the sudden and rather serious urge to smack him, or at least tell him to go fuck himself. Which somewhat surprised me honestly, because I hadn't expected to react quite that strongly. I know my opinions on the issue, and they're rather firmly held and deeply reasoned, but it's never been a very intensely personal thing to me... probably mostly because even living here in the Bay area where there is a relatively high GLBT population I've just never been very directly engaged with that community. It's always been an issue one degree removed from my direct day to day concerns. Taken dead seriously, most certainly, but I've never had a very high direct emotional investment in it specifically.
When I saw how the vote ended up going I got rather pissed off and disappointed. I won't pretend that my reaction to it was comparable to what those of you who are more directly effected by it must have reacted, but I was not a happy camper. However, most likely largely because of my relative lack of direct personal attachment to this issue I fell back on my natural instincts and looked at the problem fairly analytically. Did I mention I'm an engineer? No? Well, I'm an engineer, I always think the answer is in the facts and figures somewhere. Anyway... I directed my thoughts in that direction, and I got a lot less disappointed all of a sudden. (Once again, pitchforks down, I have a good reason. Honest.)
Here's the thing, there's been a lot of obsessing over the exit polls around here the last few days. Unfortunately most of that obsessing has been focused on the absolute wrong numbers. Which race voted which way. Which religion (or lack thereof) voted which way. It is pointless and self defeating to focus on those numbers, nothing good will come of turning this into a confrontation along racial or religious lines. What everyone should be looking at is the one single number which both tells us how this is going to go in the future and why we can afford quite a bit of optimism on the issue regardless of the outcome of this particular vote. This number:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#CAI01p1Vote by Age
Total -------------- Yes --- No
18-24 (11%)------ 36% -- 64%
25-29 (9%) ------ 41% -- 59%
30-39 (17%) ------- 52% -- 48%
40-49 (22%) ------- 59% -- 41%
50-64 (26%) ------- 51% -- 49%
65 or Over (15%)- 61% -- 39%
That number says it all to anyone looking at the long term. Try to step back from the immediate pain of a lost battle and look at how the war is going, and the picture gets a hell of a lot brighter. The bottom line is nobody gains if we turn this into a round of back and forth recriminations based on race or religion and how those types of demographics voted, look at it in the proper context. This is
a generational struggle, and the up and comers ALWAYS win the generational struggles in the end.
Always. Because there is one simple basic fact of nature that rules that contest, life expectancy. Not to be morbid, and no offense intended towards our fellow progressives of advanced years on the forum, but those young people are tomorrow's electorate and those 65+ voters of today aren't going to be voting much longer. Their numbers are declining hour by hour quite frankly, and the new arrivals to the 18+ crowd swell with every passing day and march on up the age demographics at a steady and unstoppable creep.
So, I'm not suggesting anyone here shouldn't be upset, or telling anyone to just get over it. I
am making the observation that if anyone would like a different perspective on things it's there for the having. Don't think of this vote as indicative of the shape of things to come. It isn't. It is the last dying gasp of an older generation's worldview that is on the cusp of political extinction. It will go down kicking and screaming and screeching, but it
is going down.
Soon.