Big Setback for Gay Marriage

Nov. 8, 2006 — -- Voters may have put the Democrats back in control of the House, but that doesn't mean they're embracing liberal values.

Amendments to ban gay marriage passed easily in seven of the eight states where they were on the ballot. The states include Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, voters elected a Democratic senator, governor and five congressmen but also supported the ban on gay marriage by 59 percent to 41 percent. Voters in Colorado also rejected a measure that would grant domestic partnership rights to same-sex couples.

And in the one exception, Arizona, voters rejected the amendment -- and affirmed their support of gay marriage -- by the slimmest of margins, 51 percent to 49 percent. In Virginia and Tennessee, where the Senate races went down to the wire, voters overwhelmingly supported the ban on gay marriage.

Similar amendments have passed in 20 other states. Massachusetts is currently the only state that allows gay marriage. New Jersey's Supreme Court recently ruled that same-sex couples should be granted the same rights as married couples but left it to the state legislature to define such unions. Vermont and Connecticut allow civil unions.

Republicans had hoped that the gay marriage issue would fire up their base and get them to the polls, as it did in the 2004 presidential election. Instead, conservative voters disenchanted with the party due to corruption scandals ended up pulling the lever for Democratic candidates but staying true to their fundamentalist values by rejecting gay marriage.

For example, about a third of Wisconsin voters who supported the gay marriage ban still re-elected Democratic governor Jim Doyle, according to a preliminary exit poll conducted for The Associated Press by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

Some election observers said that the measure didn't have the same impact at motivating conservative voters to vote Republican as in previous elections.