Who Will Lead?

Evan Wolfson gives the lie to the notion that it would be bad electoral politics to be for gay marriage:

• To date, every state legislator, including those running in conservative districts, who voted to support the freedom to marry and ran for re-election won.
• Even state legislators who evolve from opposing to supporting the freedom to marry win; in Massachusetts they showed a 100 percent re-election rate.
• A report published by the Human Rights Campaign after the 2004 election found 94 percent (604 out of 640) of state legislators nationwide who voted in 2004 against discrimination were re-elected in the 2004 election.
• Open-seat races with both a pro-marriage and anti-marriage candidate have most often resulted in victory for the pro-marriage candidate. Pro-marriage candidates won a vast majority, 71 percent, of the races, and none of the pro-marriage candidates lost their races because of their stance on the freedom to marry.

That should be food for thought to gay activists who routinely give ostensibly pro-gay Democrats a pass on the marriage issue.

Read Wolfson's full post on the Democratic responses on the marriage issue in the last debate.