Missing in Action at the "Meet Market"

I hvaen't posted anything for a few days since I've been otherwise occupied.  As co-chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee for NY Law School, I have been attending the Annual Faculty Recruitment Conference sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools in Washington, D.C.  Aspiring law teachers and recruitment teams from law schools take over a big Washington convention hotel for a few days to facilitate an efficient process of interviewing large numbers of people in a short period of time.

As part of the NYLS team, I participated in interviews beginning early Thursday afternoon, continuing into the evening, all day yesterday, and continuing this morning until midday.  Then I hope onto the Amtrak ACELA back to NYC, in time -- I hope -- to attend the opening of the New York City Opera's revivial of Hugo Weisgal's opera "Esther."  So I will be back to substantive posting soon.

I haven't posted anything about the election and LGBT rights.  On Tuesday we were 2 for 3. 

There has been a lot of whining and moaning about the loss in Maine, where a "voter's veto" repealed the same-sex marriage law passed earlier this year.  There are a few things to remember about this vote.  Unfortunate as it was, it was NOT the enactment of a constitutional amendment or a statute banning same-sex marriage.  It has no substantive effect going forward.  All it does is to repeal the marriage law passed earlier this year.  It does not preclude the legislature from revisiting the issue, either with an interim civil union measure or another attempt at marriage.  There is a history of this in Maine.  It took several tries to get a law banning sexual orientation discrimination solidly on the books, but after several legislative actions and a few referenda, we finally got the law.  So although it was discouraging that the measure was repealed, the margin of the voting gives room for hope.  (After all, just a few short years ago national polling tended to show public opposition to same-sex marriage at 2/3 or higher, but the margin of defeat on this measure was substantially lower than that, although not much different form the measure by with California Prop 8 passed last year.

On the other hand, we had wins in Washington State -- where the public voted affirmatively to ratify the legislature's action earlier this year in expanding the domestic partnership law to be the legal equivalent of the DP laws in neighboring Oregon and California.  So registered domestic partners in Washington State will have almost all of the same legal rights and responsibilities under state law that married couples have.  The rate of approval was not as high as one would have liked, but it was high enough to be decisive - no recounts needed.  And, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, voters overwhelming supported the action by local legislators earlier this year to pass a law banning discrimination, so we can count that one a major victory, albeit solely local.

So it was not all gloom and doom on election day.  Could we have won Maine with a stronger campaign?  Perhaps, but it was no certainty, and indeed a win would have been historic, since I don't think there is anywhere in the world where a general public ballot has affirmatively enacted same-sex marriage.  It is a defeat, but determination to go back and win it is the appropriate response, not recriminations and nitpicking over this or that commercial.