Glenn Youngkin signs bill protecting SSM

[Dan the Roman]

The median position on the Right going forward is going to be Pro-gay and Lesbian, anti-LGBT. You can argue this is intellectually incoherent but people don't develop political views based off a compass. They do based on their lived experiences.

LGBT+ stuff is leftwing coded. Two-spirit and other identities tagged on are explicit creations of the leftwing academic activist world. For that reason alone, the branding is going to repellent to anyone drawn to conservatism in any form, whether ideologically or instinctively.

However, almost any normal person is going to have gay, lesbian, and in some cases trans friends and family, and in many of those cases those individuals will themselves be more formed by the place they grew up, education, employment, and race than they will be by that identity. Which in turn means we are seeing the first generation where due to being accepted Gay and Lesbian Republicans growing up in Republican communities are more likely to be anti-LGBT+ rather than anti-GOP.

Just as a hypothetical, if Glenn Younkin's son was gay in 1994, his coming out would in 90% of cases lead to him repudiating the Republican party and becoming a critic of his father. In 2024? If a the 20-year old white son of a multi-millionaire governor came out, odds are he would be a fierce defender of his father and a bitter critic of anyone who attacked his father or the party.

This has knock-on effects because it means the contact theory which pushed SSM forward has now is now working against modern "LGBT+" politics even as it solidifies the consensus in favor of SSM and other social gains. The solidity of the Canadian Tory/US Republican/Australian Liberal(to a lesser degree) position on issues is reinforced by the fact that gay and lesbian friends and family are generally not pushing back against the Anti-LGBT pro-gay line, which means the only pressure group are people from another era.

[Dan the Roman]

Virginia still has a marriage ban in its state constitution and the voters have yet to have the opportunity to remove and/or replace that language. Democrats started the process in 2021, but it has to be restarted because Republicans blocked the measure when they won the House of Delegates later that year.

So far, Nevada remains the only state to have repealed its constitutional ban (in 2020). California will almost certainly be the second state to do so, as the Legislature put it on the November ballot.

There are absolutely a lot of Republicans who still intend to nullify all same-sex marriages if they get the chance. They'll never have the public support to do it and they don't expect to let that stop them. Either way, this is definitely an impressive move from Youngkin.

Those Republicans don't need the public. They need five votes on the Supreme Court. I'm not inclined to think they have the votes now, but they certainly could in the future. If Obergefell falls, the constitutional bans in nearly 30 states suddenly become fully operational once again (and that doesn't even include the small handful of states with statutory bans).

Except all it means is that licenses won't be issued locally.  They are still required by federal law to recognize marriages performed in other states.

Furthermore, the most likely reversal is one which overturns Obergefell's reasoning but maintains full faith and credit anyway. I suspect Barrett at least is on board with that as well as probably Kavanaugh(I think people may misread Gorsuch with Bostock but Barrett has shown herself to be for proceduralism what Gorsuch is on Indian affairs)