The issue of gay marriage was all but ignored in Boston when the Democrats convened there a fortnight ago. The word went out that management didn't want the issue raised. The candidates were set in what one might call the abortion mode. The abortion mode tells a politician to say: "I do not believe in abortion, but whether to have one is a matter of human rights." We know that such a right was deciphered by the Supreme Court in 1973's Roe v. Wade. On gay marriage, the withdrawal goes one step further. The line is: "I'm against gay marriage, but it's up to the individual states to decide whether to authorize it."
That was the procedure back before Roe v. Wade: Abortion was or was not permitted according as state legislatures decided. Authority on the matter was wrested from the states by the Supreme Court. And it is exactly that looming omnipresence that the voters of Missouri anticipated in their vote on Tuesday.
The timing wasn't planned that way, but the very next day after Missouri spoke out on the matter, a Superior Court judge in the state of Washington spoke up on the other side. The judge's language was almost identical to that of the court in Massachusetts that set off the whole argument. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state constitution's equal-protection and due-process provisions granted conjugal rights to gays, and the bells tolled, as they did in San Francisco under the patronage of rump political leaders who sought to prescind the law on the question.
The Democratic leadership is understandably concerned about the political implications of the Missouri vote. President Bush months ago took the controversy in hand when he called for a constitutional amendment. Not an amendment to ban gay marriage, but one to reserve authority on the question to the states, in order to avoid another co-optation by the Supreme Court, invalidating, now, the Defense of Marriage Act.
The Democrats' fear is that the Republican Party's association with the defense of normal marriage will influence voters who would otherwise go Democratic, and cause them to switch to the GOP in the November election. Between now and November, at least nine states are expected to canvass their voters on gay marriage. At least some of these states are likely to re-register Missouri's sentiments.