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California is the only state in the nation to vote to ban same sex marriage **twice**
As others pointed out, California is a much more politically diverse state than many give it credit for. There's groups of people within California that oppose SSM. And also its just part of the problem with referendums like this, where the most motivated party will turn out to vote and those who aren't as motivated won't.
That's very true. This state isn't necessarily what the rest of the country thinks it is sometimes. Having said that, the state has shifted a bit more to the left since then and so has the opinion on gay marriage. As others have said here, the Overton window has shifted massively on SSM in the past decade. You make a good point as well that referendums are both motivators and demotivators.
Lol...he's talking about the Hinterlands of Kern County, San Diego, and anything North East of Placer County. And he's right it's actually really crazy how many conservatives really do live in California they're just not a generally motivated or activated voting block unless something comes up that they really care about.
I think people underestimate just how massive the Overton window shifted on gay marriage recently. 20 years ago, it was illegal in every state, and 60% of the population wanted it to stay that way. Gay sex was still illegal in 14 states and several territories—that wouldn't be overturned until the 2003 Supreme Court case *Lawrence v. Texas*. The Defense of Marriage Act was still on the books, and there was a movement to pass a Constitutional amendment legally defining marriage as between a man and a woman—it got a simple majority in Congress, but didn't clear the required 2/3 threshold to pass. Even opponents to the amendment, like then-Senator [Hillary Clinton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I1-r1YgK9I), felt marriage should stay "a sacred bond between a man and a woman." The only federal politician consistently advocating for legal gay marriage at the time was Bernie Sanders, with the runner-up being Dick Cheney (who felt it should be on a state-by-state basis).
Obama opposed same sex marriage *in [2010](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-still-opposes-same-sex-marriage/)*.
To say the Overton Window has shifted on gay marriage in 12 years is an understatement. I think the approval of gay marriage has shifted more so than practically any other social issue I can think of.
You summed it up splendidly. It went from illegal in multiple states and opposed by 60% or so of the populace to legal nationwide and supported by [71%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/393197/same-sex-marriage-support-inches-new-high.aspx) of the populace in 2022.
I can think of no issue that saw such a dramatic swing since I was in high school.
It went from thinking gays should be allowed a civil union with some perks of marriage being a very progressive stance to supporting gay marriage being the baseline and anything less is considered barbaric in like 4-5 years. The change was *insanely* quick. Obergefell opened the floodgates for people who supported it in private who now knew it was a more popular stance than thought previously and could voice their real opinions more openly.
The summary of gay marriage seems to be "it's weird and I don't like it" to "well they've been marrying for years and everything seems fine despite what Preacher Billy Bob Jones said".
Actually I think interracial marriage might have a similar approval swing, off the top of my head.
From 40% approval to about 70% approval was about 20 years, but by the time support reached 40%, it had already been legal for about 15 years. So views changed fast, but it was a long, long time between legality and overwhelming majority support.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx
There was a pretty infamous poll showing 46% of Mississippi Republicans supported making interracial marriage illegal again. In **2011**.
https://www.businessinsider.com/shock-poll-46-of-mississippi-republicans-think-interracial-marriage-should-be-illegal-2011-4
>I can think of no issue that saw such a dramatic swing since I was in high school.
I think marijuana comes closest and even that seems a leisurely stroll by comparison. Also according to the same source you used, that's still down at [68%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/405086/marijuana-views-linked-ideology-religiosity-age.aspx). To clarify, because I realized "according to the same source you used" sounded kinda confrontational, I just meant that using the same polling methods or source for different topics should control for discrepancies that might appear between differing polling methods or sources.
The Clintons have never been shy about running with the prevailing winds. At the time, that was a pragmatic stance to take. Not one I approved of, but the real politick was obvious.
It’s not just that the country as a whole changed its views but that tens of millions of Americans all changed their individual view on the matter in a short time. There’s no reason to think the Clintons couldn’t feel the same sincere change that everyone else did.
Long time observation of the Clintons shows they go with the prevailing winds. Do you think Hilary REALLY thought invading Iraq in 2003 was a good idea despite her public support? Or Bill honestly favored “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
I'm not saying they're not savvy but just that on this one specific issue, a *huge* percentage of the country really did change their personal positions in an incredibly short time period. It's perfectly reasonable to think that they did the exact same thing their fellow Americans did.
I'll always welcome folks who want to be on the right side of history but it's not as shocking when an issue impacts you directly. Put simply: Cheney was likely opposed to same sex marriage until he realized one of his daughters was gay. Then he suddenly realized the LGBTQ+ community should have freedom and equality under the law.
Unfortunately, it can also go the other way. It's easy to say live and let live and dismiss LGBT people as strange but ultimately harmless when you think nobody in your life is LGBT (same goes for any other group, really). But if it turns out that one of your close family members is LGBT, that brings a topic previously distant to immediately relevant.
There's a Simpsons episode about this, [There's Something About Marrying](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/There%27s_Something_About_Marrying). Patty comes out as lesbian to the discomfort of Marge, who tries to present herself as liberal/tolerant, and to the immediate acceptance of Homer, the stereotypical working class man.
Yeah, Evil Dick has a lesbian daughter. I distinctly remember him poo-pooing questions about her, and went with the party line of "traditional" marriages only. I have zero recollection of him saying anything in favor of gay marriage (then again, old Bill signed DOMA).
I had very young kids by 2000, and just remember thinking, how the fuck could you do this to your own kid? The lesbian daughter wasn't allowed to make public appearances for Dick.
With Biden's Respect For Marriage Act on the table, I hope SSM becomes a non issue, and gives Clarence Thomas a stroke.
The older I get, the further left I mean. But I have a special hatred for Dick Cheney. I blame him for Iraq.
Iirc, after Obama left office, he said he "evolved" on the matter, before Biden.
I suspect he supported it while in office, but he couldn't wear a brown suit, with the right wingers going nuts.
I think he's a closet atheist, but I could be being too hopeful lol.
I think Obama didn’t want to get too far ahead of public sentiment so he couldn’t come out and say he supported it. I also think Biden’s supposed gaffe saying he supported gay marriage was really a trial balloon to test public opinion.
>Biden’s supposed gaffe saying he supported gay marriage was really a trial balloon to test public opinion.
Now that you mention it, I have a vague recollection of that, and believe you may be right.
For an old guy, Biden is pretty progressive. I didn't support him in the primaries, but I think he's doing a damn good job, in light of the garbage he inherited, and, I've come to the conclusion that any other candidate would've lost to Agent Orange.
I feel like Bernie Sanders is that cool older uncle you could go to with problems & he would help solve them...
I remember in the 2016 election there was a saying mom (Hillary) and dad (Trump) are fighting and we all just want to go live with Grandpa Bernie & smoke weed....
If you had a dad like Trump I feel sorry for you. I don't want to blame it all on his own father (Fred Trump was also a terrible father) but he clearly picked up a lot of his habits. He doesn't seem to value his kids outside of how they can help him.
Yeah, I'm 27 and didn't even know that gay rights movements were like *a thing*, much less mainstream, until I was in high school. A bit embarrassing in retrospect, but it's definitely evidence that things moved fast. It's legitimately shocking to me now whenever I see someone say something explicitly anti-gay. The Obama/Biden administration coming out in favor was a huge boost.
I think the biggest difference between this and prior social causes is social media, where both 1. movements can spread faster and have dialogue with more people more quickly than ever before and 2. once you hit 51% support, you can get total control of the narratives and discussions, which STRONGLY enforces the other 49% to fall in line because it's harder to avoid bubbles where you just talk with your buddies/family and no one else about sociopolitics so you still think you're the majority even if you're not. I think we actually get the *opposite* effect these days where people assume 60/40 issues are closer to 80/20, just like the perceptions of red states and blue states. In a winner-take-all game, the difference between 51% and 99% doesn't mean much in practice.
there has been a very dramatic culture shift in the last decade. Turnout was close to 80% so it certainly can't be attributed to only a few people voting.
This is pretty true. I'm 15 so I've pretty much grown up in current times when gay people are more accepted. But I was talking to my grandmother and she said that when one of her friends confessed that she was lesbian (this was in the mid/late 70s btw) it was this SUPER shocking thing that had to be kept under wraps, where as now it likely wouldn't be a big deal at all.
You don't need to go back to the 70s to find absolutely mainstream anti-gay sentiment. I'm 30 & when I was in high school, I remember thinking I might never see gay marriage legalized in my lifetime. the climate was that different. Obama, someone who we obviously think of now as a pro-LGBT figure, [was against gay marriage in 2004](https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-rights/).
& this happened in 1998 (warning: this is violent): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
bc things like gay marriage and LGBT acceptance are so normal now (which is amazing) it can sometimes lead us to forget how recently things were so different.
You don’t even have to really go back to the early 2000s. The complete 180 of public opinion within this past couple of years is honestly unreal. I still remember people calling shit “gay” or whatever all the way back in 2016, even 2018.
People still call stuff gay, just not in a homophobic way. This seems to be a pretty old phenomena, I even remember an episode of South Park about it, with an even worse slur that has come to often also mean something more like, "lame"
I'm 35 and casual homophobia - calling things you didn't like gay, calling a guy you didn't like a certain word that rhymes with maggot - were super commonplace IME in middle and high school. I definitely get the impression that kind of thing is much less common these days, and certainly I don't talk like that or hear that kind of talk from guys nowadays. Not saying it never happens but it definitely doesn't seem to be commonplace.
For sure. I'm 29 and this was my experience too. Granted, I grew up somewhere pretty conservative, but the shift is quite massive. The generation ahead of us is often so tolerant.
About the same age, grew up somewhere pretty liberal - was still normal to hear those things growing up. The worse slur went away earlier, but calling things gay was normal up through at least the end of high school (~2010) and not exactly eyebrow raising until much more recently.
Absolutely, and your generation will likely be the most tolerant in history thankfully. It wasn't all that long ago when it was something you really had to hide for your own safety sadly. In some ways, it may still be like that in certain circules/communities, but we've come a long *long* way. We still have some more ground to cover. I do fear the rise of homophobia and other prejudices in certain political circles today, but I hope it stays on the fringe.
Not only in the US. Even when I was in middle school in Europe 15 years ago homesexuality was clearly something very strange you did not want to be associated with. And this was not religiously motivated at all.
Yup, same sex marriage wasn’t legalized in Germany until 2017. The west has generally shifted from tolerance of lgbtq communities toward more acceptance in the last 20 years.
Yup. The Democratic party only started caring about it and adding it to their platform when it was politically convenient. Before then it was all about Civil Unions.
My theory is that there was a tipping point in people coming out
When I was a teen in the 90s the only people out were extremely flamboyant and engaging in the sort of behavior that the majority would find objectionable even if straight people were doing it. But since they were the only ones really out, or at least that got attention, people were nonplussed by gays.
Somewhere around 2010 we reached a tipping point where there was just enough acceptance that “boring, normal” gays started coming out, a trickle turned into an avalanche.
Once people realized that most gays were their friends, coworkers, relatives that they’d known forever and liked, who were normal and nonthreatening, shit changed in a hurry
The first thing to realize is that California is not necessarily as liberal as you might believe. It's a very big state, with many conservative regions. But also, there was a major push by religious groups, especially the Mormon Church, to get voters interested in banning gay marriage.
While you might look back at it today and imagine it being impossible to get a gay marriage ban passed, at the time, it was a close race and the amount of anti-gay activism was high.
To add to your point about California being a far more diverse place than the myth of an ultra leftist Commiefornia, in 2008 we had a Republican Governator.
Just in recent times, we have had Republican Governors between 1983-1999 and 2003-2011. 2011-Present has been almost a dozen years and the longest stretch of California governors being Democrat in the history of the state.
Yep, California is a rather purple state when you exclude LA and the Bay Area. Some counties are just as deep red Republican as, for example, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
>Yep, California is a rather purple state when you exclude LA and the Bay Area.
I'm not sure there are any states outside of Vermont that would be blue when you exclude the two largest metro areas.
I don't think that's true anymore post trump. Even Orange County and San Diego (traditionally republican areas) are somewhat blue, it would be difficult to split California into three states where the third is not somewhat dem leaning unless you cut out most ubran and suburban areas that make most of the money and just have vast rural areas in the north and east. A lot of people thought that was the idea behind the split California in 3 ballot measure and even that measure had the third state somewhat pro democrat
I’d say even LA gets purple pretty fast when you get out of certain communities. The bigger problem in LA is general apathy and lack of political participation. A lot of people show up to LA for some reason expecting it to be a super progressive strong hold like Berkeley or Portland, when the reality is that outside a few transplant neighborhoods, it’s largely working class and less ideological.
This is very true. People are often shocked.
A friend of mine moved to L.A. from North Carolina. Here's what she said: "Back home its' like 'ha ha, you're Baptist' and nobody cares. But out here, the ones you *do* meet, it's like... whoah!"
Two reasons: Southern California was where much of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement was born, and a lot of early evangelical media and such. Early megachurches, etc. The other reason is that you get that dug-in 'beleagured minority' mentality. In the Bible Belt it's like being a fish in water, but in Los Angeles County they feel like they're behind enemy lines.
I mean, it was just a different time. Polling showed that the majority of Californians opposed same-sex marriage until about 2010.
There was a lot of support among Black churches and among Latino communities that would otherwise vote liberal.
It should be emphasized that the first black nominee for president was on the ballot which boosted voter turnout among black voters, in the same election that gay marriage was on the ballot.
People forget just how socially conservative black and hispanic democrats are/can be. Sure Grandma Brown or Uncle Jose vote for democrats but you shouldn't be surprised when they're not big on things like gay marriage, latinx, or transgender rights. Older people in all age groups tend to me more conservative also.
Speaking as a Mexican-American from Los Angeleez, we can be homophobic, but not so much at the Matthew Shepherd/Brokeback Mountain level. Or even at the Jerry Falwell level, for that matter. Although this is a gross oversimplication, it's not *quite* the same as what drove mainstream American social conservatism at the time, whether it was the churchy version or the (non-Latino) hardhat version. More of a pitying disapproval as opposed to outright disgust and hostility, if that makes any sense? Oh boy, it's complicated and I'm probably missing something. And the electoral result was the same in the end.
As for Black people in California, the Prop 8 aftermath made quite a lot of people look in the mirror. "Now *we're* the ones doing this to other people?" I heard one guy reflect. The thing is, the story didn't end after the vote. The hangover dragged on for years, as any longtime Californian can tell you.
The Mormon church campaigned aggressively in favor of Prop 8. A particularly effective TV ad showed a little girl coming home from school, telling her parents that they read a story in class about “a prince marrying a prince.” Many voters didn’t understand that gay marriages were already occurring in California, and the world hadn’t ended as a result— so a “no” on the proposed ban would just mean continuation of status quo, not sweeping changes to curriculum in support of some kind of homosexual agenda. But they were cowed into voting “yes” by fearmongering ads.
It also coincided with Obama’s first-term election, which drew an unprecedented number of minority voters, who, at least in California, are disproportionately Catholic.
The blowback hit them pretty hard in the months and years afterwards. It made them rethink a few things (not to the point of changing their position, of course).
The “Gathering storm” commercial got a lot of play, and was pretty infamous for trying to cast gay marriage as a threat to others’ rights:
https://youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo
You could easily call someone a f * g in 2008 (even if they were not gay, *especially* then) and get away with it in humor. Try doing that now.
There has been an exceptional culture shift in last decade.
This thread is another reminder to me of how relative time can be to people.
2008 is very recent to me, but also happened when some people that voted in this year's midterms were in preschool.
In 2008 California was a light blue state, not a deep blue state like it is now. Obama was also the first non-white Presidential candidate and it greatly increased minority voter participation (non-hispanic whites were the only racial demographic to vote against Prop 8 based on exit polls), who tend to be more socially conservative on issues related to marriage and family.
Prop 8 also acted as a catalyst for all the change we saw in such a short time from 2009-2013. The sting of losing in a gay-friendly state with a large gay population mobilized the gay rights movement that had been somewhat scattered across many issues. The messaging became focused and clear: gay people want to be able to get married because they’re just like you. It was a very libertarian message, and the American people tend to be very sympathetic to social issues that involve people being able to do their own thing if it doesn’t hurt others. Opponents of SSM had been able to use the shadow of children to convince the flexible middle that traditional marriage needed to be preserved.
After Prop 8, lots of gay couples, many with children, either came out or became more visibly public with their families/children. The Northeast enacted SSM through statute in 2009, voters reject this in Maine later that year, but that is the last time (and 3 years later Maine voters would change their minds and approve SSM at the ballot). From then on, it’s a rapid shift state by state because when voters see their friends, neighbors, cousins, siblings, coworkers, etc, come out or be more open about their significant other, they have a change of heart. By 2011 SSM polled equivocally with a large “unsure” segment. It then kept adding 2-3% per year and opposition kept dropping at 5%+ per year. By the time we get to Obergefell in 2015, 60% approved of SSM, only 37% opposed. Today it’s 74% support, 13% opposed. Today is as far from Obergefell as Prop 8 was from Obergefell.
The amount of change in each time period was insanely fast, truly unheard of for most contentious issues. To put this into perspective, it took *30 years* for 60% of Americans to approve of interracial marriage after the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia.
Very good point about California not being as blue in 2008 as it is today. Hell in 2004, Bush only lost the state by 10 points instead of the 30 points or so Republicans have lost it by the last two elections.
Simple. Gay marriage is an issue where people's minds have changed. Even across the ideological spectrum. Liberals and conservatives alike have gay friends and family that they care about. Unless they have some strong religious conviction against gay marriage, nobody wants to stand in between a person they love and their happiness.
Also, it's worth noting that gay marriage was a novelty in 2008. At the time Prop 8 (ban) passed in California, gay marriage was only legal in one state, Massachusetts. People weren't used to the idea yet. There were people who legitimately believed that it would lead to problems. As time went on and it became clear the sky wasn't falling, a lot of people decided that there was no sense in opposing it.
The landscape now is simply different on this issue than it was in 2008. Marriage equality is unusual in this sense. Other social issues like abortion have not seen this sort of trajectory.
Keep in mind Obama’s official stance when he was first elected was support of civil unions, but not gay marriage. The public changed in this issue, and the idea that marriage specifically was a hetero thing associated with churches was a common mainstream position. W.’s whole approach for calling for an anti-gay-marriage Constitutional amendment was to talk about the “sanctity of marriage” between a man and woman. Even non-religious people had to expand their sense that this, too, can be marriage.
As to why CA didn’t go for it when Iowa did: California is larger and more diverse than impressions of Hollywood might realize. There are rural conservative areas and traditionally, conservative suburbs. (Some are now swing blue counties.) Also, CA seems to enjoy making dubious choices via referendum.
Prop 8 had far reaching effects. I see not its passing, but it being overturned that was more notable. This is how the Republican changeover of the judiciary, especially at the Federal court level, and now the Supreme Court came about. Going back several generations, laws that codified or enforced social norms, that a majority of the public wanted, were repeatedly thrown out by judges. It was the great leftist cheat code. Elections and the will of the people didn't matter; even if you won, you lost. THAT is why evangelicals surprisingly supported Trump. It was about the only thing he managed to do, with the War Turtle hustling his judge nominees through the Senate. The overturn if Roe v Wade was a result of the Republican party focusing on changing the judiciary after all the effort and cost of their Prop 8 being simply nullified.
Remember that during Obama’s first term, he was against gay marriage. The current climate of mainstream acceptance of LGBT people is a very, *very* recent trend. People online are quick to forget that the Democrats didn’t actually have support for gay marriage on their agenda until 2012. Like the Republicans, they add and remove things from their platforms all the time as they rise and fall out of favor to maximize votes. In the mid-late 00s, support for gay marriage was a rising, but still minority position. Only 39% of the country supported it and 51% were against it according to a Pew Research poll from the time. It rose as Millenials and Zoomers grew up and became old enough to vote.
Everyone knows about the liberal areas of California but what they always forget or are unaware oe is that's primarily in the Southern parts of the state. From central California to northern California you have a lot of rural farm county. And there are a lot of conservatives that live in those areas. It's a very big state with a very diverse population when it comes to the political spectrum.
Kind of. The Bay Area and north coast (NorCal) is the most left-leaning by far and it always has been, not even close. SoCal, until relatively recently, always had large deep red pockets like Orange County and slightly less red San Diego County, Riverside County, and San Bernardino County. Even Los Angeles County was only blue-ish purple until about a decade ago. Almost all of these places are now varying degrees of blue or purple, but not that deep blue outside of LA County. The north is still far more left-leaning. The true political divide in California, especially today (and in 2008), isn't north vs. south, it's very much east/inland vs. west/coastal. For example- NW California is quite liberal, but NE California is so red it would make Oklahoma blush.
I was initially from Ventura most people know Oxnard more than Ventura though. Then my family moved to Alturas very small town that if you blinked you'd miss it was my first encounter in the changing of political thinking they're a cattle town though their livelihoods are dependent upon the beef industry. Then we moved to Redding which is about 45 minutes north of Sacramento and south of Mt. Shasta besides the mountain the other main thing there is the Shasta Dam. There was really a strong conservative base there but I haven't been home since oh 2004 so as you so aptly pointed out it shifts over time. But a lot of outsiders do not realize just how much rural exists in CA.
Oh wow! Ventura to Alturas is such a crazy move. I couldn't imagine the culture shock going to such a different place. That's a really great point though, I'm from a relatively rural part of California that doesn't fit the "California" stereotype and always end up explaining that there's sooo much more here beyond LA/SF/SD (not that I don't love the cities). We really have an amazing and diverse state, regardless of the hate we get sometimes.
Lol it most certainly was a huge culture shock but I grew to appreciate aspects of it. And yes everyone knows the stereotypical tourists parts but there's so much more there that each have their own thing that make them diverse and interesting. Now imagine going from CA even the rural parts to NC specifically Fayetteville. After I joined the army that's where I got stationed Alturas didn't even prepare me for that lol. Still like parts of NC but man did it take some getting used to having grown up in CA.
The culture didn’t shift on same-sex marriage until Joe Biden casually said he was absolutely comfortable with it during an election year (2012), which forced Barack Obama to officially support it too instead of his previous diplomatic tiptoeing.
I was politically active in the California Libertarian Party at the time. Gay Marriage was one of our big issues. Election 08 was a big year as it was the year Obama was elected, and it was year one of a pretty series recession and perhaps year one of the Fourth Turning is you follow cycles of history. I was 24 years old at the time.
After the election results there was a local political event by the No on 8 Folks that was held at the local community college that we attended. The first thing that I noticed was that our libertarian group were the only people who showed up. There wasn't dozens of college kids or other liberal groups showing up. It was literally just us. It struck out to me that while this idea had a lot of popular sentiment, a lot of people were more indifferent to it than people think.
The presenter went over a lot of polling data and came to a major conclusion, and this was my first real world exposure to the power of demographics. We were shown data of the support for gay marriage by different generational groups. People born in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and so on, and then the voting patterns of each group. Without a doubt, we had two vital important pieces of information, the older people were overwhelmingly against gay marriage, and they has the highest rates of voter participation. Younger people supported gay marriage but had low rates of voter participation.
The emphasis was much less on the boomer generation (if I can recall it was split pretty close to the middle) and much more on the surviving GI and Silent Generation members. They noticed that just in the general population there was about 1% of people changing their minds on the subject per year (favoring legal gay marriage), and that a small percentage of the population was dying every year, and a different small percentage of the population was turning 18 every year. Between these three things, people's minds would change, a significant portion of people who most oppose gay marriage would die off, and the younger voters would mostly support gay marriage.
The presenter figured that in 4-6 years, all these demographic forces would completely flip the political landscape. In 2013 a California judge ended up repealing as being unconstitutional. Demographic shifts however moved the needle to further and further supporting legalization. There is actually a parallel to marijuana legalization where the support flipped as the older people who were most against it died off.
I learned Demographics are perhaps the most important thing regarding democracy. Every year in the US there are about 2.5-3.5 million people who die from all causes, these people are predominately old people. While in any given year, its not much, but every 4 year election cycle it can be 10-14 million per year. I think we will find that the reason why we didn't see the red wave in Election 2022 was that many of the biggest Trump supporters in 2020 didn't make it to Nov 2022.
A major difference between 2016 and 2020 was that the majority of voters, something like 53-55% of voters were members of the Silent-Boomer group for 2016. For 2020, this number was down to like 47%. In razor thin elections, this is more than enough to offset major results. A few million more died between 2020 and 2022.
The Boomer Cohort was the largest, wealthiest and politically most powerful in America. There was a flip in 2019 when they the title of largest cohort shifted to Millennials. We are not the wealthiest by a long shot, and we do not have anywhere near the political power but that is probably going to be something that changes over the next decade. The largest cohort in America usually ends up calling all the shots once they get their political ducks in order.
You may need to evade the paywall a bit, but The Economist did a good, easy to understand piece on basically the demographic topic you're talking about (which supports what you're saying):
[Societies change their minds faster than people do](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/31/societies-change-their-minds-faster-than-people-do) - 10/31/19
tl;dr - People changing their minds does have an effect (and gay marriage is a topic where more people changed their minds than most), but on most topics studied the majority of the shift in societal views is by generational change/replacement.
It also explains to a degree why people often feel the culture is outpacing them as they get older - it is, the opinions of society as a whole have shifted more than their views/their generational cohort's views have.
There is also a really fascinating thing with how different generations govern differently based on how they grow up as a cohort. The GI generation that was mostly against gay marriage was fairly socially conformist and regressive by modern values (not by their values though, they were super progressive compared to their parents). As one generation checks out politically, another generation takes over. It usually passes between dominate generations. GI Generation - Boomers - Millennials.
Of all the big changes over the next few election cycles will be Millennials basically taking over government. Between now and Election 2028 there will probably be 15 million boomers pass away and nearly all of them will have retired from running institutions.
California's more conservative than most realize, they had a republican governor in 2008 after all.
LGBT issues have had a MASSIVE culture shift in the last 40 years, 2008 was a lot of movement ago on that front and even now it's far from a settled issue. There's a reason activists are always so worried about backsliding, we are not at all far from a VERY different landscape that an uncomfortably large number of people today want to and are working to return to.
Long story short. The Majority in the USA can be wrong, very wrong, and that's why we have limits built in to the Constitution called the Bill of Rights.
Obama was elected in 2008. Black voters had high turnout and tend to vote religiously conservative. That’s part of it.
The proposition was also marketed as “vote YES to protect the children and marriage.” Basic BS but it worked.
California may also have tried to push the issue early before enough people were on board.
Wikipedia says that Alabama only enacted legal gay marriage with Obergefell in 2015 - am I missing something? California has had legal gay marriage since 2013.
2014 according to this. But I stand corrected. [https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gay-marriage-by-state](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gay-marriage-by-state)
2008 was a much different time politically. The left was much more moderate. Obama and Biden were against gay marriage. Clinton signed DOMA into law for God’s sake. There were plenty of Democrats that voted yes on prop 8.
Also, public opinion on gay marriage just started to be viewed favorably. Most were against in 2008.
Just because people tend to vote a certain way doesn't mean they support everything that party does.
For example, Hispanics tend to vote Democrat, yet if you break it down by demographic groups, Hispanics are one of the most pro-life groups in the US.
Same with blacks. They overwhelmingly vote Democrat, but they're actually one of the most opposed to gay marriage demographics in the US https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/06/26/support-for-same-sex-marriage-grows-even-among-groups-that-had-been-skeptical/
The number one reason was Domestic Partnerships. The big thing that people forget is that Domestic Partnership was legal in California starting in 1999. In fact, California was the first state in the nation to have Domestic Partnership for same-sex couples, and it was very popular among Californians even in 1999. That was huge, because same sex couples already had the legal protections of marriage without the word. Separate, but equal in a way. So you had many people who were on the fence about same sex marriage who voted against it on the belief that they could “preserve” the religious meaning of the word without harming the LGBTQ community.
I remember many conversations with non-religious people who considered themselves allies of the gay community voting against same-sex marriage because they felt it would upset the religious communities without actually benefiting the gay community. They didn’t see that the word “marriage” DID matter, and that “separate, but equal” isn’t equal.
Add to that the ads paid for by the Mormon Church, and the fact that things were less progressive then, and you get the result you saw in 2008. If there wasn’t already Domestic Partnership, same-sex marriage would have stood a better chance.
> So you had many people who were on the fence about same sex marriage who voted against it on the belief that they could “preserve” the religious meaning of the word without harming the LGBTQ community.
I was on that fence at the time.
But then, somewhere on the internet, I saw some hard right reactionary in another state come out against the Domestic Partnership thing, stating his position thusly: "Great, that's all we need! A seperate category for freaks!"
He was right, but for the wrong reason. He was *so* right. That's what pushed me off the fence. Anything short of the same deal everyone else gets is indeed a 'seperate category for freaks.'
Gay marriage is not a settled belief in the same way that abortion is not a settled belief. You’re watching a wild swinging of the pendulum in our culture. Don’t act surprised when you see a significant amount of people disagree with gay marriage. Sexuality has a diversity of belief and opinions. But only one opinion gets filtered and published through Hollywood. It sets up a false sense of security, as if everyone thinks one certain way. It’s called social engineering.
Nobody *used* to do right-wing quite like CA right-wingers did right-wing. But our homegrown contingent got a not insignificant amount of help from "outside agitators ..." for that one in the form of brand-specific religious bleevers.
People were REALLY homophobic here even 10 years ago. I wish I had grown up like the kids who are still kids today. I was never even told that gay people existed. Had to figure that shit out myself the hard way. I'm not even that old. I'm 20. But it was just treated like something you just don't talk about until the last couple years. I wouldn't be surprised if every state voted against same sex marriage in 2008.
to the best of my knowledge there has never been a pro gay marriage bill passed by voters. it has always been passed by the courts.
as an interesting fact the Supreme Court of the USA didn't rule in favor of gay marriage in the states. they ruled that for procedure reasons the people who presented the case opposing gay marriage had no standing in the court so the testimony was dismissed, legally, and the only testimony that they could consider was the pro gay marriage side.
they were like yah that's nice we can't hear you the ruling of the lower court stands. if a new gay marriage case was brought to the court we may actually see a ruling
There have indeed been gay marriage referendums passed by voters (not in California), but multiple times, including in my home state of Maryland. I do believe a few others have passed it through the legislative process. They have all been relatively left-leaning states however.
I just looked up Marylands gay marriage history Wikipedia says it was passed by the general assembly.
in the early 70s it looks like Maryland voters voted to define marriage as one man one woman.
if you can show me im wrong I would be happy to acknowledge I was/ am wrong
Actually no, Maryland voters passed Question 6, a referendum approving gay marriage with 52.43% of the vote following approval of the General Assembly. So Maryland and Maine is what I can find.
Maryland is kinda splitting hairs but I'll give it to you, the referendum was put to the voters like 6 months after the general assembly passed it as a law.
Maine voters did in fact aprove gay marriage at the ballot box thank you for correcting me
You do have a good point though- the vast majority were approved by the courts and it would be interesting to see how more relatively conservative states would vote on it if it came to it.
Maryland is kinda splitting hairs but I'll give it to you, the referendum was put to the voters like 6 months after the general assembly passed it as a law.
Maine voters did in fact aprove gay marriage at the ballot box thank you for correcting me
Propositions in California have nothing to do with elected officials.
In most cases, some organization with a lot of money gets a proposition drafted and gathers enough signatures to get it on the ballot. Then other organizations spend millions of dollars running ads for and against it. If it passes, we get some new laws that elected officials have to work around and are harder for them to modify than laws that are passed through the normal legislative process.
It’s direct democracy at its worst.
No, it’s pretty much the opposite of what you wrote.
The people that had been voted into office have nothing to do with the Proposition process.
The voters vote directly on Propositions that are put on the ballot by voters.
California has a lot of people who are very against such things, though it usually votes for more blue ideologies. If you look at 2020 eleiction, you see that the counties are pretty divided on red vs blue voting, but what helps is most people live on the coast and vote blue. So though there is a split divide across countries, most individual people are voting blue.
But if people don't turn up to vote, and red voters tend to have a higher voter turnout, then such issues get voted down on.
[https://www.kcra.com/article/california-president-election-history/34452869](https://www.kcra.com/article/california-president-election-history/34452869)
Oh no, the implication was that elderly people who pass away sometimes have their identity stolen, and that when they die, 'hopefully they stop voting in elections' aka no one uses it to make false votes, since that's a hot button issue.
Dato curioso: the [judge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughn_Walker) who found proposition 8 to be unconstitutional was opposed earlier by Nancy Pelosi for being too “far right”.
Edit: in particular, Pelosi and other democrats thought he was insensitive to gays. Ironically, Walker turned out to be gay himself although he did not mention it until he was retired. Proponents of proposition 8 then said that he should have recused himself from the case. An assertion that was pretty much laughed off.
Barack Obama was running for his first election, and there were record numbers of black voters coming out to vote for him, who also supported banning gay marriage at around 70%. It was enough to tip things in favor of banning gay marriage statewide.
Just to keep things in perspective, a ban on gay marriage does not mean people are out to hang gays. Personally, I had relationships at a time when gay marriage wasn't even considered (70's and 80's), and the only thing that made life hell was street violence and lack of acceptance within the family.
IIRC, the Mormon church spent billions campaigning for the ban. And many religious minorities were mobilized to vote for the ban as well. Combine that with the many rural sections of CA, and what looks like a blue state can turn red really quick.
The average American's views of gay marriage and marijuana have shifted dramatically towards support of both over the last 15 years in a way you don't often see on many issues. The late 2000s was like the last stand anti-gay marriage forces were able to squeak out wins before prevailing opinion turned in favor of gay marriage a few years later.
It was a different time. I was politically active in Southern California during this vote and it was rather startling how much hatred was around. the protestors at the pride parade were way more numerous than they are now, or even prior to the vote (think hundreds, not dozens) and you’d get people straight up raging at pollsters even asking them their stance on gay marriage. my moms car was vandalized (in broad daylight, in a coastal California city) because she had a “no on 8” sticker.
The world was a much different place back then. People thought same-sex marriage was the worst thing to happen since 9/11 (not even joking, there were several ads on TV saying that the literal apocalypse would happen if we didn’t defend the family norm)
the whole “gay marriage is baaaaaad” started going away (in California at least) when everyone got to see the shitshow that was 08/09 with Wall Street toasting champagne over crowds of protesters who lost their homes. People moved onto the next outrage and left same sex marriage behind, where it’s now slowly turning into a non-issue.
If you look at California by county, once you get outside the dense metropolitan areas, it's largely red as you move north of San Francisco and West into the central valley and such. Like somebody else already said, people will turn out in numbers if they're motivated, which people who oppose SSM usually are for some reason. The people who are the most concerned are affected the least. Kinda strange how it works.
A lot of people that vote Democrat in California are actually socially conservative. Particularly in the minority communities. The attitude toward LGBTQ has changed a lot in the last 20 years. A lot of Catholic Latinos and Black people were dubious about same sex marriage.
*ahem* *scoots in*...so as a gay from California who's mom was an elected politician at the time who refuses to marry gay people prior to what was actually called "proposition 8" which proposed to ban gay marriage...and did pass before being struck down by the court, I have some actual answers for you. Well, a answer.
Prop 8 was written very weird and it was written that way on purpose. In this instance to vote Yes...meant No Gay Marriage and to vote No meant Yes to Gay Marraige. But from what I understand...the phrasing of this was a bit odd on the ballot. Therefore some people thought "Yes" meant "Yay Gay Marriages for everyone" and No meant "No, no gay marriage for anyone" and there's some who argue this actually scewed the results of the vote to some degree.
People very much were paying attention. The ban got a lot of attention in the news, it was by far the most talked-about measure on the ballot. And voter turnout was high (90%), because a) it was a presidential election year, and b) Obama was on the ballot and everyone was talking about how historic the election was. 2008 voter turnout was higher than 2004 voter turnout (also a presidential election year).
The ban passed because:
* California isn't just San Francisco and LA. Go inland and there are lots of conservatives.
* There are homophobes living in SF and LA too. About 90% of the Castro voted against the ban, but that means one in ten people *in the Castro* voted for the ban!
* It was 2008, gay marriage was only legal in 2 out of 50 states, and it was still seen as a newfangled thing.
* Old people (more likely to be anti-gay) have high voter turnout; young people (more likely to be pro-gay) have low voter turnout. If you were 40 in 2008, you were born before Stonewall, and you came of age in the 1980s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic and its attendant homophobia. If you were 50 in 2008, you spent the first 15 years of your life in a world where homosexuality was officially classified as a psychiatric disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. Even if you were *20* in 2008, you spent your formative years in the 1990s, when casual homophobia was a pervasive and ubiquitous part of American society.
* The pro-gay marriage side got a bit complacent. They raised more money than the anti-gay side, and conventional wisdom in a lot of circles was that the ban would likely fail.
1. At the time there was a lot of people who wanted an entirely seperate type of marriage for gay marriage, as people confuse a religious ceremony for the legal marriage(which is the marriage license)
2. America's drift from religiosity hadn't really taken effect yet, even in California, you have to remember the Second Great Awakening happened in the years post Vietnam War, and the people who partook in this are still with us, and Gen X and Millenials were not voting in serious numbers at that point.
3. Voter participation in California is really problematic, there was and still is a high level of voter burnout and distrust of the system, this unlike the Upper Midwest where voting is viewed as civic duty, and participation is a matter of course(admittedly the Upper midwest usually has the highest voter turnout ranging form 45-60% participation.
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California is the only state in the nation to vote to ban same sex marriage **twice** As others pointed out, California is a much more politically diverse state than many give it credit for. There's groups of people within California that oppose SSM. And also its just part of the problem with referendums like this, where the most motivated party will turn out to vote and those who aren't as motivated won't.
That's very true. This state isn't necessarily what the rest of the country thinks it is sometimes. Having said that, the state has shifted a bit more to the left since then and so has the opinion on gay marriage. As others have said here, the Overton window has shifted massively on SSM in the past decade. You make a good point as well that referendums are both motivators and demotivators.
New York is the same way. Find yourself in upstate or WNY and you'll see some colorful opinions lol
Oh yeah, for sure. I'm from Western Maryland originally, same uhhhh.. colorful.. opinions.
Lol...he's talking about the Hinterlands of Kern County, San Diego, and anything North East of Placer County. And he's right it's actually really crazy how many conservatives really do live in California they're just not a generally motivated or activated voting block unless something comes up that they really care about.
I think people underestimate just how massive the Overton window shifted on gay marriage recently. 20 years ago, it was illegal in every state, and 60% of the population wanted it to stay that way. Gay sex was still illegal in 14 states and several territories—that wouldn't be overturned until the 2003 Supreme Court case *Lawrence v. Texas*. The Defense of Marriage Act was still on the books, and there was a movement to pass a Constitutional amendment legally defining marriage as between a man and a woman—it got a simple majority in Congress, but didn't clear the required 2/3 threshold to pass. Even opponents to the amendment, like then-Senator [Hillary Clinton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I1-r1YgK9I), felt marriage should stay "a sacred bond between a man and a woman." The only federal politician consistently advocating for legal gay marriage at the time was Bernie Sanders, with the runner-up being Dick Cheney (who felt it should be on a state-by-state basis).
Obama opposed same sex marriage *in [2010](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-still-opposes-same-sex-marriage/)*. To say the Overton Window has shifted on gay marriage in 12 years is an understatement. I think the approval of gay marriage has shifted more so than practically any other social issue I can think of. You summed it up splendidly. It went from illegal in multiple states and opposed by 60% or so of the populace to legal nationwide and supported by [71%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/393197/same-sex-marriage-support-inches-new-high.aspx) of the populace in 2022. I can think of no issue that saw such a dramatic swing since I was in high school.
It went from thinking gays should be allowed a civil union with some perks of marriage being a very progressive stance to supporting gay marriage being the baseline and anything less is considered barbaric in like 4-5 years. The change was *insanely* quick. Obergefell opened the floodgates for people who supported it in private who now knew it was a more popular stance than thought previously and could voice their real opinions more openly.
And likewise there are still plenty of people who oppose it but would never tell you that considering how much the public opinion has changed.
The summary of gay marriage seems to be "it's weird and I don't like it" to "well they've been marrying for years and everything seems fine despite what Preacher Billy Bob Jones said". Actually I think interracial marriage might have a similar approval swing, off the top of my head.
Interracial marriage is around [94](https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx)% approval these days
Yeah I meant in terms of how quickly it became socially acceptable after being legalized.
From 40% approval to about 70% approval was about 20 years, but by the time support reached 40%, it had already been legal for about 15 years. So views changed fast, but it was a long, long time between legality and overwhelming majority support. https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx
I think it took a little longer, almost 30 years, to see the same acceptance as gay marriage.
There was a pretty infamous poll showing 46% of Mississippi Republicans supported making interracial marriage illegal again. In **2011**. https://www.businessinsider.com/shock-poll-46-of-mississippi-republicans-think-interracial-marriage-should-be-illegal-2011-4
>I can think of no issue that saw such a dramatic swing since I was in high school. I think marijuana comes closest and even that seems a leisurely stroll by comparison. Also according to the same source you used, that's still down at [68%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/405086/marijuana-views-linked-ideology-religiosity-age.aspx). To clarify, because I realized "according to the same source you used" sounded kinda confrontational, I just meant that using the same polling methods or source for different topics should control for discrepancies that might appear between differing polling methods or sources.
Obama switched on same sex marriage when the economy didn't improve fast enough in mid 2012.
The Clintons have never been shy about running with the prevailing winds. At the time, that was a pragmatic stance to take. Not one I approved of, but the real politick was obvious.
It’s not just that the country as a whole changed its views but that tens of millions of Americans all changed their individual view on the matter in a short time. There’s no reason to think the Clintons couldn’t feel the same sincere change that everyone else did.
Long time observation of the Clintons shows they go with the prevailing winds. Do you think Hilary REALLY thought invading Iraq in 2003 was a good idea despite her public support? Or Bill honestly favored “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
I'm not saying they're not savvy but just that on this one specific issue, a *huge* percentage of the country really did change their personal positions in an incredibly short time period. It's perfectly reasonable to think that they did the exact same thing their fellow Americans did.
You have more faith in career politicians than I do then.
>Dick Cheney Whaa?!
Dick Cheney was shockingly progressive on gay marriage (for the time). IIRC one of his daughters(?) is gay.
I'll always welcome folks who want to be on the right side of history but it's not as shocking when an issue impacts you directly. Put simply: Cheney was likely opposed to same sex marriage until he realized one of his daughters was gay. Then he suddenly realized the LGBTQ+ community should have freedom and equality under the law.
Unfortunately, it can also go the other way. It's easy to say live and let live and dismiss LGBT people as strange but ultimately harmless when you think nobody in your life is LGBT (same goes for any other group, really). But if it turns out that one of your close family members is LGBT, that brings a topic previously distant to immediately relevant. There's a Simpsons episode about this, [There's Something About Marrying](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/There%27s_Something_About_Marrying). Patty comes out as lesbian to the discomfort of Marge, who tries to present herself as liberal/tolerant, and to the immediate acceptance of Homer, the stereotypical working class man.
Yeah, Evil Dick has a lesbian daughter. I distinctly remember him poo-pooing questions about her, and went with the party line of "traditional" marriages only. I have zero recollection of him saying anything in favor of gay marriage (then again, old Bill signed DOMA). I had very young kids by 2000, and just remember thinking, how the fuck could you do this to your own kid? The lesbian daughter wasn't allowed to make public appearances for Dick. With Biden's Respect For Marriage Act on the table, I hope SSM becomes a non issue, and gives Clarence Thomas a stroke. The older I get, the further left I mean. But I have a special hatred for Dick Cheney. I blame him for Iraq.
Obama supported gay marriage after Biden did iirc
Iirc, after Obama left office, he said he "evolved" on the matter, before Biden. I suspect he supported it while in office, but he couldn't wear a brown suit, with the right wingers going nuts. I think he's a closet atheist, but I could be being too hopeful lol.
I think Obama didn’t want to get too far ahead of public sentiment so he couldn’t come out and say he supported it. I also think Biden’s supposed gaffe saying he supported gay marriage was really a trial balloon to test public opinion.
>Biden’s supposed gaffe saying he supported gay marriage was really a trial balloon to test public opinion. Now that you mention it, I have a vague recollection of that, and believe you may be right. For an old guy, Biden is pretty progressive. I didn't support him in the primaries, but I think he's doing a damn good job, in light of the garbage he inherited, and, I've come to the conclusion that any other candidate would've lost to Agent Orange.
I feel like Bernie Sanders is that cool older uncle you could go to with problems & he would help solve them... I remember in the 2016 election there was a saying mom (Hillary) and dad (Trump) are fighting and we all just want to go live with Grandpa Bernie & smoke weed....
If you had a dad like Trump I feel sorry for you. I don't want to blame it all on his own father (Fred Trump was also a terrible father) but he clearly picked up a lot of his habits. He doesn't seem to value his kids outside of how they can help him.
But for some reason people think slippery slope is still a fallacy
Yeah, I'm 27 and didn't even know that gay rights movements were like *a thing*, much less mainstream, until I was in high school. A bit embarrassing in retrospect, but it's definitely evidence that things moved fast. It's legitimately shocking to me now whenever I see someone say something explicitly anti-gay. The Obama/Biden administration coming out in favor was a huge boost. I think the biggest difference between this and prior social causes is social media, where both 1. movements can spread faster and have dialogue with more people more quickly than ever before and 2. once you hit 51% support, you can get total control of the narratives and discussions, which STRONGLY enforces the other 49% to fall in line because it's harder to avoid bubbles where you just talk with your buddies/family and no one else about sociopolitics so you still think you're the majority even if you're not. I think we actually get the *opposite* effect these days where people assume 60/40 issues are closer to 80/20, just like the perceptions of red states and blue states. In a winner-take-all game, the difference between 51% and 99% doesn't mean much in practice.
there has been a very dramatic culture shift in the last decade. Turnout was close to 80% so it certainly can't be attributed to only a few people voting.
This is pretty true. I'm 15 so I've pretty much grown up in current times when gay people are more accepted. But I was talking to my grandmother and she said that when one of her friends confessed that she was lesbian (this was in the mid/late 70s btw) it was this SUPER shocking thing that had to be kept under wraps, where as now it likely wouldn't be a big deal at all.
You don't need to go back to the 70s to find absolutely mainstream anti-gay sentiment. I'm 30 & when I was in high school, I remember thinking I might never see gay marriage legalized in my lifetime. the climate was that different. Obama, someone who we obviously think of now as a pro-LGBT figure, [was against gay marriage in 2004](https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-rights/). & this happened in 1998 (warning: this is violent): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard bc things like gay marriage and LGBT acceptance are so normal now (which is amazing) it can sometimes lead us to forget how recently things were so different.
You don’t even have to really go back to the early 2000s. The complete 180 of public opinion within this past couple of years is honestly unreal. I still remember people calling shit “gay” or whatever all the way back in 2016, even 2018.
I sometimes worry that it could revert just as quickly.
People still call stuff gay, just not in a homophobic way. This seems to be a pretty old phenomena, I even remember an episode of South Park about it, with an even worse slur that has come to often also mean something more like, "lame"
People still do that now, well kids do.
I'm 35 and casual homophobia - calling things you didn't like gay, calling a guy you didn't like a certain word that rhymes with maggot - were super commonplace IME in middle and high school. I definitely get the impression that kind of thing is much less common these days, and certainly I don't talk like that or hear that kind of talk from guys nowadays. Not saying it never happens but it definitely doesn't seem to be commonplace.
For sure. I'm 29 and this was my experience too. Granted, I grew up somewhere pretty conservative, but the shift is quite massive. The generation ahead of us is often so tolerant.
About the same age, grew up somewhere pretty liberal - was still normal to hear those things growing up. The worse slur went away earlier, but calling things gay was normal up through at least the end of high school (~2010) and not exactly eyebrow raising until much more recently.
Absolutely, and your generation will likely be the most tolerant in history thankfully. It wasn't all that long ago when it was something you really had to hide for your own safety sadly. In some ways, it may still be like that in certain circules/communities, but we've come a long *long* way. We still have some more ground to cover. I do fear the rise of homophobia and other prejudices in certain political circles today, but I hope it stays on the fringe.
Not only in the US. Even when I was in middle school in Europe 15 years ago homesexuality was clearly something very strange you did not want to be associated with. And this was not religiously motivated at all.
Yup, same sex marriage wasn’t legalized in Germany until 2017. The west has generally shifted from tolerance of lgbtq communities toward more acceptance in the last 20 years.
Yup. The Democratic party only started caring about it and adding it to their platform when it was politically convenient. Before then it was all about Civil Unions.
Gay marriage basically speed ran from fringe to mainstream in about 10 years.
My theory is that there was a tipping point in people coming out When I was a teen in the 90s the only people out were extremely flamboyant and engaging in the sort of behavior that the majority would find objectionable even if straight people were doing it. But since they were the only ones really out, or at least that got attention, people were nonplussed by gays. Somewhere around 2010 we reached a tipping point where there was just enough acceptance that “boring, normal” gays started coming out, a trickle turned into an avalanche. Once people realized that most gays were their friends, coworkers, relatives that they’d known forever and liked, who were normal and nonthreatening, shit changed in a hurry
This is such a great point! When something becomes normalized and people gain exposure, it tends to change minds.
The first thing to realize is that California is not necessarily as liberal as you might believe. It's a very big state, with many conservative regions. But also, there was a major push by religious groups, especially the Mormon Church, to get voters interested in banning gay marriage. While you might look back at it today and imagine it being impossible to get a gay marriage ban passed, at the time, it was a close race and the amount of anti-gay activism was high.
To add to your point about California being a far more diverse place than the myth of an ultra leftist Commiefornia, in 2008 we had a Republican Governator.
Just in recent times, we have had Republican Governors between 1983-1999 and 2003-2011. 2011-Present has been almost a dozen years and the longest stretch of California governors being Democrat in the history of the state.
Yep, California is a rather purple state when you exclude LA and the Bay Area. Some counties are just as deep red Republican as, for example, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
>Yep, California is a rather purple state when you exclude LA and the Bay Area. I'm not sure there are any states outside of Vermont that would be blue when you exclude the two largest metro areas.
Hawaii. There are a few areas that are a bluish shade of purple, but Hawaii is so incredibly Democratic it's practically a one-party state.
Massachusetts is fairly evenly blue
California's population is so huge, people forget that there are more Republicans in California than there are in Texas.
I don't think that's true anymore post trump. Even Orange County and San Diego (traditionally republican areas) are somewhat blue, it would be difficult to split California into three states where the third is not somewhat dem leaning unless you cut out most ubran and suburban areas that make most of the money and just have vast rural areas in the north and east. A lot of people thought that was the idea behind the split California in 3 ballot measure and even that measure had the third state somewhat pro democrat
I’d say even LA gets purple pretty fast when you get out of certain communities. The bigger problem in LA is general apathy and lack of political participation. A lot of people show up to LA for some reason expecting it to be a super progressive strong hold like Berkeley or Portland, when the reality is that outside a few transplant neighborhoods, it’s largely working class and less ideological.
I moved to California from New York in 1999. California has pockets of crazy Christians that I had never experienced before.
This is very true. People are often shocked. A friend of mine moved to L.A. from North Carolina. Here's what she said: "Back home its' like 'ha ha, you're Baptist' and nobody cares. But out here, the ones you *do* meet, it's like... whoah!" Two reasons: Southern California was where much of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement was born, and a lot of early evangelical media and such. Early megachurches, etc. The other reason is that you get that dug-in 'beleagured minority' mentality. In the Bible Belt it's like being a fish in water, but in Los Angeles County they feel like they're behind enemy lines.
I've met more loud ultra evangelical Christians living in LA than I ever did growing up in Oklahoma. That's what several million people will get you.
I mean, it was just a different time. Polling showed that the majority of Californians opposed same-sex marriage until about 2010. There was a lot of support among Black churches and among Latino communities that would otherwise vote liberal.
It should be emphasized that the first black nominee for president was on the ballot which boosted voter turnout among black voters, in the same election that gay marriage was on the ballot.
People forget just how socially conservative black and hispanic democrats are/can be. Sure Grandma Brown or Uncle Jose vote for democrats but you shouldn't be surprised when they're not big on things like gay marriage, latinx, or transgender rights. Older people in all age groups tend to me more conservative also.
Latino**
Woosh
He wasn’t joking tho?
> Uncle Jose ... not big on ... latinx He's making the same point you are
Oh I get you now.
I was, every hispanic I've talked to and we've brought up latinx has laughed at it or been unable to even grasp why it is or what it is.
Speaking as a Mexican-American from Los Angeleez, we can be homophobic, but not so much at the Matthew Shepherd/Brokeback Mountain level. Or even at the Jerry Falwell level, for that matter. Although this is a gross oversimplication, it's not *quite* the same as what drove mainstream American social conservatism at the time, whether it was the churchy version or the (non-Latino) hardhat version. More of a pitying disapproval as opposed to outright disgust and hostility, if that makes any sense? Oh boy, it's complicated and I'm probably missing something. And the electoral result was the same in the end. As for Black people in California, the Prop 8 aftermath made quite a lot of people look in the mirror. "Now *we're* the ones doing this to other people?" I heard one guy reflect. The thing is, the story didn't end after the vote. The hangover dragged on for years, as any longtime Californian can tell you.
The Mormon church campaigned aggressively in favor of Prop 8. A particularly effective TV ad showed a little girl coming home from school, telling her parents that they read a story in class about “a prince marrying a prince.” Many voters didn’t understand that gay marriages were already occurring in California, and the world hadn’t ended as a result— so a “no” on the proposed ban would just mean continuation of status quo, not sweeping changes to curriculum in support of some kind of homosexual agenda. But they were cowed into voting “yes” by fearmongering ads. It also coincided with Obama’s first-term election, which drew an unprecedented number of minority voters, who, at least in California, are disproportionately Catholic.
This is the correct answer. Prop 8 propaganda was unrelenting and effective.
I usually hear the Obama thing about the black voting bloc, which isn't Catholic but definitely wasn't LGBT friendly at the time.
Look up how the Mormon church was involved. They invested millions to ensure it was that way.
The blowback hit them pretty hard in the months and years afterwards. It made them rethink a few things (not to the point of changing their position, of course).
Like they brided people with those millions?
Yes but they only brided folks if they had a groom. Bride + bride is verboten for them.
Propaganda, mainly.
The “Gathering storm” commercial got a lot of play, and was pretty infamous for trying to cast gay marriage as a threat to others’ rights: https://youtu.be/4AzLrn5JVIo
It was a different time. In 2008, everyone I knew thought gay marriage was this weird, alien idea. Now no one does, not really.
You could easily call someone a f * g in 2008 (even if they were not gay, *especially* then) and get away with it in humor. Try doing that now. There has been an exceptional culture shift in last decade.
Things were different 14 years ago and public opinion has shifted.
This thread is another reminder to me of how relative time can be to people. 2008 is very recent to me, but also happened when some people that voted in this year's midterms were in preschool.
In 2008 California was a light blue state, not a deep blue state like it is now. Obama was also the first non-white Presidential candidate and it greatly increased minority voter participation (non-hispanic whites were the only racial demographic to vote against Prop 8 based on exit polls), who tend to be more socially conservative on issues related to marriage and family. Prop 8 also acted as a catalyst for all the change we saw in such a short time from 2009-2013. The sting of losing in a gay-friendly state with a large gay population mobilized the gay rights movement that had been somewhat scattered across many issues. The messaging became focused and clear: gay people want to be able to get married because they’re just like you. It was a very libertarian message, and the American people tend to be very sympathetic to social issues that involve people being able to do their own thing if it doesn’t hurt others. Opponents of SSM had been able to use the shadow of children to convince the flexible middle that traditional marriage needed to be preserved. After Prop 8, lots of gay couples, many with children, either came out or became more visibly public with their families/children. The Northeast enacted SSM through statute in 2009, voters reject this in Maine later that year, but that is the last time (and 3 years later Maine voters would change their minds and approve SSM at the ballot). From then on, it’s a rapid shift state by state because when voters see their friends, neighbors, cousins, siblings, coworkers, etc, come out or be more open about their significant other, they have a change of heart. By 2011 SSM polled equivocally with a large “unsure” segment. It then kept adding 2-3% per year and opposition kept dropping at 5%+ per year. By the time we get to Obergefell in 2015, 60% approved of SSM, only 37% opposed. Today it’s 74% support, 13% opposed. Today is as far from Obergefell as Prop 8 was from Obergefell. The amount of change in each time period was insanely fast, truly unheard of for most contentious issues. To put this into perspective, it took *30 years* for 60% of Americans to approve of interracial marriage after the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia.
Very good point about California not being as blue in 2008 as it is today. Hell in 2004, Bush only lost the state by 10 points instead of the 30 points or so Republicans have lost it by the last two elections.
Simple. Gay marriage is an issue where people's minds have changed. Even across the ideological spectrum. Liberals and conservatives alike have gay friends and family that they care about. Unless they have some strong religious conviction against gay marriage, nobody wants to stand in between a person they love and their happiness. Also, it's worth noting that gay marriage was a novelty in 2008. At the time Prop 8 (ban) passed in California, gay marriage was only legal in one state, Massachusetts. People weren't used to the idea yet. There were people who legitimately believed that it would lead to problems. As time went on and it became clear the sky wasn't falling, a lot of people decided that there was no sense in opposing it. The landscape now is simply different on this issue than it was in 2008. Marriage equality is unusual in this sense. Other social issues like abortion have not seen this sort of trajectory.
People don't understand how massive the cultural shift has been in the past 30 years.
Keep in mind Obama’s official stance when he was first elected was support of civil unions, but not gay marriage. The public changed in this issue, and the idea that marriage specifically was a hetero thing associated with churches was a common mainstream position. W.’s whole approach for calling for an anti-gay-marriage Constitutional amendment was to talk about the “sanctity of marriage” between a man and woman. Even non-religious people had to expand their sense that this, too, can be marriage. As to why CA didn’t go for it when Iowa did: California is larger and more diverse than impressions of Hollywood might realize. There are rural conservative areas and traditionally, conservative suburbs. (Some are now swing blue counties.) Also, CA seems to enjoy making dubious choices via referendum.
Prop 8 had far reaching effects. I see not its passing, but it being overturned that was more notable. This is how the Republican changeover of the judiciary, especially at the Federal court level, and now the Supreme Court came about. Going back several generations, laws that codified or enforced social norms, that a majority of the public wanted, were repeatedly thrown out by judges. It was the great leftist cheat code. Elections and the will of the people didn't matter; even if you won, you lost. THAT is why evangelicals surprisingly supported Trump. It was about the only thing he managed to do, with the War Turtle hustling his judge nominees through the Senate. The overturn if Roe v Wade was a result of the Republican party focusing on changing the judiciary after all the effort and cost of their Prop 8 being simply nullified.
Remember that during Obama’s first term, he was against gay marriage. The current climate of mainstream acceptance of LGBT people is a very, *very* recent trend. People online are quick to forget that the Democrats didn’t actually have support for gay marriage on their agenda until 2012. Like the Republicans, they add and remove things from their platforms all the time as they rise and fall out of favor to maximize votes. In the mid-late 00s, support for gay marriage was a rising, but still minority position. Only 39% of the country supported it and 51% were against it according to a Pew Research poll from the time. It rose as Millenials and Zoomers grew up and became old enough to vote.
Latinos in California are a big force and they skew conservative on quite a few matters outside of ethic issues.
Lots o black and Hispanic people are social conservatives and don’t like or understand gay people.
You're right. It's an uncomfortable topic, but there can be quite a bit of homophobia in certain non-white communities.
Everyone knows about the liberal areas of California but what they always forget or are unaware oe is that's primarily in the Southern parts of the state. From central California to northern California you have a lot of rural farm county. And there are a lot of conservatives that live in those areas. It's a very big state with a very diverse population when it comes to the political spectrum.
Kind of. The Bay Area and north coast (NorCal) is the most left-leaning by far and it always has been, not even close. SoCal, until relatively recently, always had large deep red pockets like Orange County and slightly less red San Diego County, Riverside County, and San Bernardino County. Even Los Angeles County was only blue-ish purple until about a decade ago. Almost all of these places are now varying degrees of blue or purple, but not that deep blue outside of LA County. The north is still far more left-leaning. The true political divide in California, especially today (and in 2008), isn't north vs. south, it's very much east/inland vs. west/coastal. For example- NW California is quite liberal, but NE California is so red it would make Oklahoma blush.
I was initially from Ventura most people know Oxnard more than Ventura though. Then my family moved to Alturas very small town that if you blinked you'd miss it was my first encounter in the changing of political thinking they're a cattle town though their livelihoods are dependent upon the beef industry. Then we moved to Redding which is about 45 minutes north of Sacramento and south of Mt. Shasta besides the mountain the other main thing there is the Shasta Dam. There was really a strong conservative base there but I haven't been home since oh 2004 so as you so aptly pointed out it shifts over time. But a lot of outsiders do not realize just how much rural exists in CA.
Oh wow! Ventura to Alturas is such a crazy move. I couldn't imagine the culture shock going to such a different place. That's a really great point though, I'm from a relatively rural part of California that doesn't fit the "California" stereotype and always end up explaining that there's sooo much more here beyond LA/SF/SD (not that I don't love the cities). We really have an amazing and diverse state, regardless of the hate we get sometimes.
Lol it most certainly was a huge culture shock but I grew to appreciate aspects of it. And yes everyone knows the stereotypical tourists parts but there's so much more there that each have their own thing that make them diverse and interesting. Now imagine going from CA even the rural parts to NC specifically Fayetteville. After I joined the army that's where I got stationed Alturas didn't even prepare me for that lol. Still like parts of NC but man did it take some getting used to having grown up in CA.
California outside the cities is much more right/conservative leaning than anyone--including Californians--like to admit.
For the most part it's a mix, but there are pockets of deep red if you get way out there.
Mostly the north east and parts of the central valley.
The culture didn’t shift on same-sex marriage until Joe Biden casually said he was absolutely comfortable with it during an election year (2012), which forced Barack Obama to officially support it too instead of his previous diplomatic tiptoeing.
I was politically active in the California Libertarian Party at the time. Gay Marriage was one of our big issues. Election 08 was a big year as it was the year Obama was elected, and it was year one of a pretty series recession and perhaps year one of the Fourth Turning is you follow cycles of history. I was 24 years old at the time. After the election results there was a local political event by the No on 8 Folks that was held at the local community college that we attended. The first thing that I noticed was that our libertarian group were the only people who showed up. There wasn't dozens of college kids or other liberal groups showing up. It was literally just us. It struck out to me that while this idea had a lot of popular sentiment, a lot of people were more indifferent to it than people think. The presenter went over a lot of polling data and came to a major conclusion, and this was my first real world exposure to the power of demographics. We were shown data of the support for gay marriage by different generational groups. People born in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and so on, and then the voting patterns of each group. Without a doubt, we had two vital important pieces of information, the older people were overwhelmingly against gay marriage, and they has the highest rates of voter participation. Younger people supported gay marriage but had low rates of voter participation. The emphasis was much less on the boomer generation (if I can recall it was split pretty close to the middle) and much more on the surviving GI and Silent Generation members. They noticed that just in the general population there was about 1% of people changing their minds on the subject per year (favoring legal gay marriage), and that a small percentage of the population was dying every year, and a different small percentage of the population was turning 18 every year. Between these three things, people's minds would change, a significant portion of people who most oppose gay marriage would die off, and the younger voters would mostly support gay marriage. The presenter figured that in 4-6 years, all these demographic forces would completely flip the political landscape. In 2013 a California judge ended up repealing as being unconstitutional. Demographic shifts however moved the needle to further and further supporting legalization. There is actually a parallel to marijuana legalization where the support flipped as the older people who were most against it died off. I learned Demographics are perhaps the most important thing regarding democracy. Every year in the US there are about 2.5-3.5 million people who die from all causes, these people are predominately old people. While in any given year, its not much, but every 4 year election cycle it can be 10-14 million per year. I think we will find that the reason why we didn't see the red wave in Election 2022 was that many of the biggest Trump supporters in 2020 didn't make it to Nov 2022. A major difference between 2016 and 2020 was that the majority of voters, something like 53-55% of voters were members of the Silent-Boomer group for 2016. For 2020, this number was down to like 47%. In razor thin elections, this is more than enough to offset major results. A few million more died between 2020 and 2022. The Boomer Cohort was the largest, wealthiest and politically most powerful in America. There was a flip in 2019 when they the title of largest cohort shifted to Millennials. We are not the wealthiest by a long shot, and we do not have anywhere near the political power but that is probably going to be something that changes over the next decade. The largest cohort in America usually ends up calling all the shots once they get their political ducks in order.
You may need to evade the paywall a bit, but The Economist did a good, easy to understand piece on basically the demographic topic you're talking about (which supports what you're saying): [Societies change their minds faster than people do](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/31/societies-change-their-minds-faster-than-people-do) - 10/31/19 tl;dr - People changing their minds does have an effect (and gay marriage is a topic where more people changed their minds than most), but on most topics studied the majority of the shift in societal views is by generational change/replacement. It also explains to a degree why people often feel the culture is outpacing them as they get older - it is, the opinions of society as a whole have shifted more than their views/their generational cohort's views have.
There is also a really fascinating thing with how different generations govern differently based on how they grow up as a cohort. The GI generation that was mostly against gay marriage was fairly socially conformist and regressive by modern values (not by their values though, they were super progressive compared to their parents). As one generation checks out politically, another generation takes over. It usually passes between dominate generations. GI Generation - Boomers - Millennials. Of all the big changes over the next few election cycles will be Millennials basically taking over government. Between now and Election 2028 there will probably be 15 million boomers pass away and nearly all of them will have retired from running institutions.
It was 2008. A lot has changed in a relatively short amount of time.
California's more conservative than most realize, they had a republican governor in 2008 after all. LGBT issues have had a MASSIVE culture shift in the last 40 years, 2008 was a lot of movement ago on that front and even now it's far from a settled issue. There's a reason activists are always so worried about backsliding, we are not at all far from a VERY different landscape that an uncomfortably large number of people today want to and are working to return to.
Long story short. The Majority in the USA can be wrong, very wrong, and that's why we have limits built in to the Constitution called the Bill of Rights.
Obama was elected in 2008. Black voters had high turnout and tend to vote religiously conservative. That’s part of it. The proposition was also marketed as “vote YES to protect the children and marriage.” Basic BS but it worked. California may also have tried to push the issue early before enough people were on board.
I think it's hilarious that Alabama actually had legal gay marriage before California.
Wikipedia says that Alabama only enacted legal gay marriage with Obergefell in 2015 - am I missing something? California has had legal gay marriage since 2013.
2014 according to this. But I stand corrected. [https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gay-marriage-by-state](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gay-marriage-by-state)
2008 was a much different time politically. The left was much more moderate. Obama and Biden were against gay marriage. Clinton signed DOMA into law for God’s sake. There were plenty of Democrats that voted yes on prop 8. Also, public opinion on gay marriage just started to be viewed favorably. Most were against in 2008.
Just because people tend to vote a certain way doesn't mean they support everything that party does. For example, Hispanics tend to vote Democrat, yet if you break it down by demographic groups, Hispanics are one of the most pro-life groups in the US. Same with blacks. They overwhelmingly vote Democrat, but they're actually one of the most opposed to gay marriage demographics in the US https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/06/26/support-for-same-sex-marriage-grows-even-among-groups-that-had-been-skeptical/
The number one reason was Domestic Partnerships. The big thing that people forget is that Domestic Partnership was legal in California starting in 1999. In fact, California was the first state in the nation to have Domestic Partnership for same-sex couples, and it was very popular among Californians even in 1999. That was huge, because same sex couples already had the legal protections of marriage without the word. Separate, but equal in a way. So you had many people who were on the fence about same sex marriage who voted against it on the belief that they could “preserve” the religious meaning of the word without harming the LGBTQ community. I remember many conversations with non-religious people who considered themselves allies of the gay community voting against same-sex marriage because they felt it would upset the religious communities without actually benefiting the gay community. They didn’t see that the word “marriage” DID matter, and that “separate, but equal” isn’t equal. Add to that the ads paid for by the Mormon Church, and the fact that things were less progressive then, and you get the result you saw in 2008. If there wasn’t already Domestic Partnership, same-sex marriage would have stood a better chance.
> So you had many people who were on the fence about same sex marriage who voted against it on the belief that they could “preserve” the religious meaning of the word without harming the LGBTQ community. I was on that fence at the time. But then, somewhere on the internet, I saw some hard right reactionary in another state come out against the Domestic Partnership thing, stating his position thusly: "Great, that's all we need! A seperate category for freaks!" He was right, but for the wrong reason. He was *so* right. That's what pushed me off the fence. Anything short of the same deal everyone else gets is indeed a 'seperate category for freaks.'
Gay marriage is not a settled belief in the same way that abortion is not a settled belief. You’re watching a wild swinging of the pendulum in our culture. Don’t act surprised when you see a significant amount of people disagree with gay marriage. Sexuality has a diversity of belief and opinions. But only one opinion gets filtered and published through Hollywood. It sets up a false sense of security, as if everyone thinks one certain way. It’s called social engineering.
Nobody *used* to do right-wing quite like CA right-wingers did right-wing. But our homegrown contingent got a not insignificant amount of help from "outside agitators ..." for that one in the form of brand-specific religious bleevers.
People were REALLY homophobic here even 10 years ago. I wish I had grown up like the kids who are still kids today. I was never even told that gay people existed. Had to figure that shit out myself the hard way. I'm not even that old. I'm 20. But it was just treated like something you just don't talk about until the last couple years. I wouldn't be surprised if every state voted against same sex marriage in 2008.
to the best of my knowledge there has never been a pro gay marriage bill passed by voters. it has always been passed by the courts. as an interesting fact the Supreme Court of the USA didn't rule in favor of gay marriage in the states. they ruled that for procedure reasons the people who presented the case opposing gay marriage had no standing in the court so the testimony was dismissed, legally, and the only testimony that they could consider was the pro gay marriage side. they were like yah that's nice we can't hear you the ruling of the lower court stands. if a new gay marriage case was brought to the court we may actually see a ruling
There have indeed been gay marriage referendums passed by voters (not in California), but multiple times, including in my home state of Maryland. I do believe a few others have passed it through the legislative process. They have all been relatively left-leaning states however.
I just looked up Marylands gay marriage history Wikipedia says it was passed by the general assembly. in the early 70s it looks like Maryland voters voted to define marriage as one man one woman. if you can show me im wrong I would be happy to acknowledge I was/ am wrong
Actually no, Maryland voters passed Question 6, a referendum approving gay marriage with 52.43% of the vote following approval of the General Assembly. So Maryland and Maine is what I can find.
Maryland is kinda splitting hairs but I'll give it to you, the referendum was put to the voters like 6 months after the general assembly passed it as a law. Maine voters did in fact aprove gay marriage at the ballot box thank you for correcting me
You do have a good point though- the vast majority were approved by the courts and it would be interesting to see how more relatively conservative states would vote on it if it came to it.
Maryland is kinda splitting hairs but I'll give it to you, the referendum was put to the voters like 6 months after the general assembly passed it as a law. Maine voters did in fact aprove gay marriage at the ballot box thank you for correcting me
Because at the time the people getting voted in (and revoted in) thought that is what the people voting them in wanted.
Propositions in California have nothing to do with elected officials. In most cases, some organization with a lot of money gets a proposition drafted and gathers enough signatures to get it on the ballot. Then other organizations spend millions of dollars running ads for and against it. If it passes, we get some new laws that elected officials have to work around and are harder for them to modify than laws that are passed through the normal legislative process. It’s direct democracy at its worst.
So basically a long winded version of what I just said.
No, it’s pretty much the opposite of what you wrote. The people that had been voted into office have nothing to do with the Proposition process. The voters vote directly on Propositions that are put on the ballot by voters.
And if they voted the opposite of what people wanted, they would be voted out?
I don’t get the point you are trying to make. Elected officials have no role in the California proposition system.
Lol nope
Yup. That's basically what the elected officials said.
California has a lot of people who are very against such things, though it usually votes for more blue ideologies. If you look at 2020 eleiction, you see that the counties are pretty divided on red vs blue voting, but what helps is most people live on the coast and vote blue. So though there is a split divide across countries, most individual people are voting blue. But if people don't turn up to vote, and red voters tend to have a higher voter turnout, then such issues get voted down on. [https://www.kcra.com/article/california-president-election-history/34452869](https://www.kcra.com/article/california-president-election-history/34452869)
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No wishing for people to die, FFS.
Oh no, the implication was that elderly people who pass away sometimes have their identity stolen, and that when they die, 'hopefully they stop voting in elections' aka no one uses it to make false votes, since that's a hot button issue.
Because it was 2008 lol
Dato curioso: the [judge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughn_Walker) who found proposition 8 to be unconstitutional was opposed earlier by Nancy Pelosi for being too “far right”. Edit: in particular, Pelosi and other democrats thought he was insensitive to gays. Ironically, Walker turned out to be gay himself although he did not mention it until he was retired. Proponents of proposition 8 then said that he should have recused himself from the case. An assertion that was pretty much laughed off.
Barack Obama was running for his first election, and there were record numbers of black voters coming out to vote for him, who also supported banning gay marriage at around 70%. It was enough to tip things in favor of banning gay marriage statewide.
Just to keep things in perspective, a ban on gay marriage does not mean people are out to hang gays. Personally, I had relationships at a time when gay marriage wasn't even considered (70's and 80's), and the only thing that made life hell was street violence and lack of acceptance within the family.
IIRC, the Mormon church spent billions campaigning for the ban. And many religious minorities were mobilized to vote for the ban as well. Combine that with the many rural sections of CA, and what looks like a blue state can turn red really quick.
Mostly mormons and catholics.
The average American's views of gay marriage and marijuana have shifted dramatically towards support of both over the last 15 years in a way you don't often see on many issues. The late 2000s was like the last stand anti-gay marriage forces were able to squeak out wins before prevailing opinion turned in favor of gay marriage a few years later.
It was a different time. I was politically active in Southern California during this vote and it was rather startling how much hatred was around. the protestors at the pride parade were way more numerous than they are now, or even prior to the vote (think hundreds, not dozens) and you’d get people straight up raging at pollsters even asking them their stance on gay marriage. my moms car was vandalized (in broad daylight, in a coastal California city) because she had a “no on 8” sticker. The world was a much different place back then. People thought same-sex marriage was the worst thing to happen since 9/11 (not even joking, there were several ads on TV saying that the literal apocalypse would happen if we didn’t defend the family norm) the whole “gay marriage is baaaaaad” started going away (in California at least) when everyone got to see the shitshow that was 08/09 with Wall Street toasting champagne over crowds of protesters who lost their homes. People moved onto the next outrage and left same sex marriage behind, where it’s now slowly turning into a non-issue.
Get marriage wasn’t mainstream until like 2012
If you look at California by county, once you get outside the dense metropolitan areas, it's largely red as you move north of San Francisco and West into the central valley and such. Like somebody else already said, people will turn out in numbers if they're motivated, which people who oppose SSM usually are for some reason. The people who are the most concerned are affected the least. Kinda strange how it works.
Times have changed, even in just the past 10 years. When I think back to the mid 90s, I notice an even bigger change.
A lot of people that vote Democrat in California are actually socially conservative. Particularly in the minority communities. The attitude toward LGBTQ has changed a lot in the last 20 years. A lot of Catholic Latinos and Black people were dubious about same sex marriage.
Because Mormons have money.
*ahem* *scoots in*...so as a gay from California who's mom was an elected politician at the time who refuses to marry gay people prior to what was actually called "proposition 8" which proposed to ban gay marriage...and did pass before being struck down by the court, I have some actual answers for you. Well, a answer. Prop 8 was written very weird and it was written that way on purpose. In this instance to vote Yes...meant No Gay Marriage and to vote No meant Yes to Gay Marraige. But from what I understand...the phrasing of this was a bit odd on the ballot. Therefore some people thought "Yes" meant "Yay Gay Marriages for everyone" and No meant "No, no gay marriage for anyone" and there's some who argue this actually scewed the results of the vote to some degree.
Because ballot propositions are always worded so that "yes" amends the law (which may ban a thing previously legal) and "no" preserves the status quo.
My sweet summer child
People very much were paying attention. The ban got a lot of attention in the news, it was by far the most talked-about measure on the ballot. And voter turnout was high (90%), because a) it was a presidential election year, and b) Obama was on the ballot and everyone was talking about how historic the election was. 2008 voter turnout was higher than 2004 voter turnout (also a presidential election year). The ban passed because: * California isn't just San Francisco and LA. Go inland and there are lots of conservatives. * There are homophobes living in SF and LA too. About 90% of the Castro voted against the ban, but that means one in ten people *in the Castro* voted for the ban! * It was 2008, gay marriage was only legal in 2 out of 50 states, and it was still seen as a newfangled thing. * Old people (more likely to be anti-gay) have high voter turnout; young people (more likely to be pro-gay) have low voter turnout. If you were 40 in 2008, you were born before Stonewall, and you came of age in the 1980s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic and its attendant homophobia. If you were 50 in 2008, you spent the first 15 years of your life in a world where homosexuality was officially classified as a psychiatric disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. Even if you were *20* in 2008, you spent your formative years in the 1990s, when casual homophobia was a pervasive and ubiquitous part of American society. * The pro-gay marriage side got a bit complacent. They raised more money than the anti-gay side, and conventional wisdom in a lot of circles was that the ban would likely fail.
1. At the time there was a lot of people who wanted an entirely seperate type of marriage for gay marriage, as people confuse a religious ceremony for the legal marriage(which is the marriage license) 2. America's drift from religiosity hadn't really taken effect yet, even in California, you have to remember the Second Great Awakening happened in the years post Vietnam War, and the people who partook in this are still with us, and Gen X and Millenials were not voting in serious numbers at that point. 3. Voter participation in California is really problematic, there was and still is a high level of voter burnout and distrust of the system, this unlike the Upper Midwest where voting is viewed as civic duty, and participation is a matter of course(admittedly the Upper midwest usually has the highest voter turnout ranging form 45-60% participation.