{"id":19713,"date":"2011-05-02T07:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19713"},"modified":"2011-05-02T09:50:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T15:50:34","slug":"fighting-fighting-with-wedges-by-fighting-with-more-wedges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19713","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Fighting With Wedges By Fighting With More Wedges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lori Sturdevant demands that we “Just say no to wedge politics” in a piece called, conveniently, “Just say no to wedge politics<\/a>…”<\/p>\n

As six middle-aged, white male Republican legislators — all married in the eyes of Minnesota law — left the briefing room Tuesday after announcing their push for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, they couldn’t avoid passing DFL Sen. Scott Dibble on his way inside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…bv invoking a really, really stupid wedge.<\/p>\n

(Dibble is, by the way, middle-aged and very, very white. \u00a0He happens to be gay).<\/p>\n

How does one look a colleague in the eye or speak a civil greeting, right after announcing an intention to make that colleague’s marriage forever illegitimate?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I craned my neck to see what expressions passed between them. Darn. Too far from the door to get a good look.<\/p>\n

“They nodded,” Dibble, a three-termer from Minneapolis and currently the Senate’s only openly gay member, reported afterward. “One or two might have said ‘Hi.’ … That’s what makes it all the more odd that they are willing to effectively dehumanize me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’ll come back to this in another post later today.<\/p>\n

But hey, Lori \u00a0– good job avoiding those wedges.<\/p>\n

Let’s be clear on this – the only <\/em>reason the DFL (as opposed to gay activists, like Dibble) care about this is that when the vote comes for the amendment, the DFL is going to lose. \u00a0Maybe lose big. \u00a0As I pointed out during the election, there’s polling out there that suggests that Minnesotans strongly <\/em>oppose changing the traditional definition of marriage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If it were otherwise – if there had been any <\/em>indication that Minnesotans craved single-sex marriage – the DFL would have introduced <\/em>an amendment legalizing it in 2007, when they took complete control of the legislature, or in 2009, when their control became utterly stifling. \u00a0Even had Pawlenty vetoed it, they’d have gotten GOP votes on the issue made public, and hammered them on it in the ’08 and ’10 elections. \u00a0If there were a majority of Minnesotans who favored gay marriage<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But there is not.<\/p>\n

And so the DFL is desperate to avoid being forced to put votes on the line on this issue. \u00a0Because they know that, along with the Cornish “Stand Your Ground” Bill and Voter ID, most Minnesotans, especially outstate, Gay Marriage is a loser for them – and since the DFL’s only hope is to expand outstate (they can hardly control the Twin Cities and Duluth and the Arrowhead more thoroughly than they do), this is not part of the plan.<\/p>\n

More on Gay Marriage itself later today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lori Sturdevant demands that we “Just say no to wedge politics” in a piece called, conveniently, “Just say no to wedge politics…” As six middle-aged, white male Republican legislators — all married in the eyes of Minnesota law — left the briefing room Tuesday after announcing their push for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29,4,2,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-family-law","category-media","category-minnesota-politics","category-mn-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19713"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19716,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19713\/revisions\/19716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}