Although 27 other states since 1998 have approved amendments to their state constitutions banning gay marriage, Arizona voters bucked the national trend.
With 100 percent of the state's precincts reporting by midday Nov. 8, according to the Arizona secretary of state's website, the measure failed narrowly, with 51.4 percent opposed to Proposition 107 and 48.6 percent in favor.
In the seven other states where marriage bans passed, most received a comfortable majority. Nonetheless, the margins were narrower, on average, than in the 13 states that approved similar bans in 2004.
“It's clear that fear-mongering around same-sex marriage by the GOP and the extreme Christian right is fizzling out,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in a Nov. 8 statement. “It doesn't have the juice it had just two years ago—people are getting sick of it.”
Surprisingly narrow margins of victory Nov. 7 for marriage amendments in two conservative states encouraged gay-rights supporters as well.
In South Dakota—overwhelmingly rural and with high percentages of white Catholic and evangelical voters—the marriage amendment passed on a 52-48 percent vote.
And in Virginia, voters approved the measure on a 57-43 percent vote. That matches the margin of victory for a 2004 anti-gay-marriage amendment in much more liberal Oregon.
Most of the 2004 gay-marriage amendments passed by majorities of 70 percent or more. But on Nov. 7, such ballot measures garnered support exceeding 60 percent in only three of eight states—Idaho (63 percent), South Carolina (78 percent) and Tennessee (81 percent).
Either way, the constitutions of a majority of states in the Union now explicitly ban same-sex marriage. Many of those also ban “civil unions,” which are legal arrangements approximating the status of marriage, for same-sex couples.
That shows Americans still oppose gay marriage and continue to fear that judicial decisions in the future will impose legalized same-sex marriage on an unwilling populace, according to the head of one conservative Washington think tank.
“We see once again [that] when traditional marriage is put to the people they will support traditional marriage,” said Jim Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, in a statement. “Americans across this nation are taking their voice to the ballot box to rein in activist judges whose actions have undercut democracy, the will of the people, and marriage, our most basic social institution.”