Legalizing same sex marriage is still a blue state thing

[DonViejo]

BY CHRIS CILLIZZA
May 21 at 3:27 pm

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down Pennsylvania's ban on same sex marriage, making it the 19th state in which gay people are now free to marry. What do those 19 states (plus the District of Columbia) have in common? Every one of them went for President Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections.

For all of the momentum that efforts to legalize same sex marriage have -- nine states have overturned bans since the Supreme Court gave federal recognition to same sex couples last June -- the states in which those efforts have succeeded remain, almost exclusively, Democratic strongholds. With the exceptions of Iowa and New Hampshire -- and, maybe, Pennsylvania -- none of the remaining 16 (or 17) states where gay marriage is legal are even marginally competitive at the presidential level.

Here's our awesome map on the status of gay marriage across the country.

More of the article and a small map. Link above goes to a larger map. Don

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/same-sex-marriage/

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Arkansas? This will change soon when S states begin to fall.

[951-Riverside]

2. The whole thing is disgusting and makes me sick. I want to throw up.

Its 2014 and some people are still bent on denying others their civil rights across from board.

Why?

[Hippo_Tron]

3. States that recognize other states' marriages should be included...

If one simply has to take a road trip to another state to be get a marriage license honored in their own, they're not effectively prohibiting gay marriage, they're just losing money.

[customerserviceguy]

4. While some may consider Pennsylvania blue

I just remember James Carville's quote from the 1992 election about Pennsylvania being Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in the middle. I would imagine that there have been exploding heads in PA outside of an hour's radius of the two aforementioned cities.

While I applaud any steps towards equality, I wish that the remaining blue states (Oregon, I'm thinking about you) would have repealed homophobia by either the ballot or the legislative method. It leads to more acceptance when the people, either directly or through representative government change the law, rather than Federal judges imposing a change on a state.

We may have outlawed racial discrimination in this country, but we didn't legislate away bigotry, unfortunately.