So after a generally positive election day, one where I can take some solid comfort in the fact that although seven states voted to strip same sex couples of any and all legal rights one state refused to go along, I find myself sweating blood again over the situation in Massachusetts, the only state in the union so far, to allow same sex couples to actually marry, as opposed to being civil-unioned.

In states where it only takes a minority of voters to sign enough petitions to put a referendum on the ballot, and only a minority of registered voters actually vote on the measures, anti-gay bigots have been enormously successfully in writing their gay and lesbian neighbors out of their state constitutions.  But in most of those states, the state-houses have had little to no backbone in them to resist the hate.  The religious right is powerful in the heartland, and in the south in particular, and many politicians in those regions make their careers either catering to it, or kowtowing to it when necessary.  Standing for the devil and against the baby Jesus just isn’t a winning proposition. 

But more and more in the blue states, the fight against hate is being joined.  In California, the statehouse there actually passed a law granting same sex couples the right to marry (which Arnold to the everlasting shame of his name promptly vetoed).  And in Massachusetts they’re not taking the venomous hatreds of the anti-gay gutter laying down.  And they’re not just fighting on principle either.  They’re fighting, finally, just like the enemy does.  To win.  By any means necessary. 

Good.  Because that is what it will take.

Lawmakers voted to recess the ConCon until 2 p.m. Jan. 2, 2007 by a 109 to 87 vote, which is the last day of the legislative session. Technically, lawmakers could reconvene to take the issue up, but it’s extremely unlikely. Which means that the amendment has died by procedural maneuver.

When I first read the news I was both elated, and still a bit worried.  Why not just adjourn altogether?  Why leave prejudice and hate that one last chance and keep gay couples in the state, and all over the nation looking to Massachusetts for hope, still holding their breaths?  Well…here’s why:

The significance of the recess vote as opposed to an adjournment vote is that Governor Mitt Romney cannot call the legislature back into session.

Tactics.  They have a bigot governor who is kissing up to the religious right in hopes of making a run at the presidency.  He’s been kicking the homosexual devil for their approval for months now (which he’ll never get because he’s a Mormon, but that’s another story…).  But in this state the fighters for liberty and justice for all have taken full measure of the enemy.  They understand perfectly well that they’re in a knife fight, and so they brought a knife.  That’s how you fight a knife fight: to win.  Let the gutter howl that they’re being denied their rights.  It was their neighbor’s rights after all, that they were seeking to take away.  This fight was never about rights.  It was about power.  It was about a group of venomous haters trying to reserve democracy, and its promise of liberty and justice for all, to themselves.  If that’s what you’re about, then don’t complain when someone else comes along and takes some of that away from you: brother, you asked for it.

"I’m probably 3,000 feet to the right of Attila the Hun. But the gracious people, the socially conscious people, the liberal people, you’re the ones who always want everyone to be heard. What about these 170,000 people?" said Democratic Rep. Marie Parente.

Yes, we’re the ones who are always wanting everyone to be heard.  And yes, you’re not.  And that’s the whole point here. One-hundred and seventy billion people would still not have the right to take away a single individual’s right to equality under the law, let alone the rights of tens of thousands of their neighbors.  They only way you do that, is to assert a right of force, by virtue of the power of your shear numbers.  The term for that isn’t democracy, it’s mob rule.  And that’s why we have checks and balances in our form of government, to prevent democracy from degenerating first into the rule of mobs, and then into tyranny.  We The People includes your gay and lesbian neighbors too you drooling moron.  It includes all of us.  And yes, we are the ones who believe that.  And yes, you’re not.

The people can always vote the politicians who stood by the gay minority out of office.  But that takes more work, and it means every voter must weigh one vote taken in the statehouse against many.  Maybe a voter does not like the vote their representative made on the same sex marriage amendment, but they generally like their other votes.  Do they vote a politician they generally like out of office on that one single issue?  Now suddenly, the bigots need the rest of the population to be as passionate about denying gay people equality as they are.  And the population at large just isn’t.  They might vote against us if it’s presented to them as a single issue.  But it is not the single issue of most voters and the bigots know it.

This is how the tables turn on the bigots.  For decades now they’ve been fighting against equality for gay people in situations where they’ve been able to win on their sheer passion, against a voting public that is lukewarm at best in support of us, but only lukewarm at worst in their own prejudices.  They may find us distasteful, but they’re not going to throw out a politician they generally like because that politician let the homos marry each other.  At least not in the blue states.  Every time the gay haters have tried to hold a blue state statehouse accountable when it has supported, in some measure, the rights of same sex couples, they have failed.  They failed in Vermont. They failed in California.  And they failed in Massachusetts.  And that is why there were 109 votes to recess yesterday.  The voters Have spoken, and what they’ve said is they really don’t care that much about gay rights.  And the bigots know it.  That’s why the bigots want to fight this in a forum where they know they only need a minority of the registered voters to win, and where they can make the stab against their gay and lesbian neighbors as easy and painless as possible for just enough voters, to rewrite their constitutions.  Tactics.  They can’t complain now that they were outmaneuvered.

Well…they can…they’re hypocrites too after all.  And they can probably still keep winning this way in the red states.  Most of them.  They lost after all in Arizona, which is more "leave us alone" libertarian then conservative (no daylight savings time for us, thank you…).  But they’ve about picked off all the low hanging apples now, and the rest of it is going to be a fight, and no bigot ever wanted a fair fight.  A fight where they massively outnumber their victims, sure. Their vision of democracy is more mob rule then anything resembling the vision of the founders.  Which is why the founders put in all those checks and balances.  A democracy is a government of citizens, of equals, not of mobs.