Q Toon: Marriage Comes to Utah

National Organization for Marriage spokesguy Brian Brown inspired this week's cartoon during his appearance on MSNBC's Up on Sunday morning. 

Host Steve Kornacki wanted to talk about how much better marriage equality has been polling recently, even in red states. Aisha Moody-Mills of the Center for American Progress was willing to oblige her host, and Business Insider Josh Barro discussed the three avenues of legal opinion, legislative action, and popular vote along which marriage equality had advanced in 2013.

Brown, representing Straight Privilege, wanted to focus his fire on Robert Shelby, the Utah District Court Judge who found Utah's prohibition of same-sex marriage disciminatory. Brown repeatedly called Shelby "an activist judge," echoing the charge of Utah Governor Gary Herbert.

As Kornacki had already pointed out, Shelby's nomination was supported in glowing terms by both of Utah's Republican Senators, six-termer Orrin Hatch and Tea Partisan Mike Lee.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in introducing Shelby to the Senate Judiciary Committee said: “Whenever we have a judicial vacancy in Utah, no matter who occupies the White House, I look for a candidate to recommend who is widely respected in the legal community and who can be widely supported in the Senate. Bob Shelby certainly meets that test.”

 During the confirmation process, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, described Shelby as "pre-eminently qualified" and predicted he would be "an outstanding judge."

Dang sneaky, those activist judges.

Q Toon: Marriage Equality on Balance

With election day 13 days away, it's time for this cartoonist to stop frittering his time away on cartoons about National Coming Out Day, evangelicals slumming in the gayborhood, and TV sitcoms.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals ruled last week that the federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) is unconstitutional.

[Judge Dennis Jacobs] said the law was written so broadly that it touches more than a thousand federal laws. "Homosexuals are not in a position to adequately protect themselves from the discriminatory wishes of the majoritarian public," Jacobs wrote.
He rejected arguments by supporters of the law that it was intended to limit new categories of eligibility for federal funds, promote uniform administration of federal law, protect traditional marriage and encourage responsible procreation.
"Even if preserving tradition were in itself an important goal, DOMA is not a means to achieve it," he said.

That DOMA was headed for the Supreme Court was a virtual certainty, so the question is how the ruling will affect ballot initiatives in Minnesota, Maryland, Maine and Washington state on November 6. The legislatures of Maine, Maryland and Washington have voted for, and their governors have signed into law, marriage equality. Opposite-sex marriage exclusivity, on the other hand, is the law in Minnesota, where the Catholic Church is dropping everything else to enshrine it in the state constitution.

The Washington, opponents of marriage equality succeeded in putting Measure 74 on the ballot, possibly confusing voters because passage would actually affirm what the legislature and governor have already done.


In Maine, this marks the first time that gay-rights supporters -- rather than opponents -- have chosen to put same-sex marriage before voters. A gay-marriage law passed by the legislature in 2009 was overturned in a referendum that fall. Marriage equality supporters in the state decided to put a measure in support of marriage equality on the ballot this year, when the presidential election would draw out more voters.

The polls have the Minnesota amendment on the razor's edge, while there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about one of the other three states becoming the first in the nation to support marriage equality by popular referendum.

In Maryland, as in Maine and Washington, the most recent polls show a lead for the supporters of same-sex marriage. But comparable leads in other states -- notably in California in 2008 -- evaporated by Election Day, and Josh Levin, manager of the Marylanders for Marriage Equality campaign, expects the final result to be extremely close.

With races this close, anything, from a judge's ruling exciting one side, to the Obama and Romney campaigns' decision to focus their efforts elsewhere, could have an effect on the outcome.