No, so far as I know, George Allen will not be leaving his wife to marry a dude. Although, come to think of it, it would be a fitting conclusion to an election cycle where a conservative congressman in charge of protecting kids was instead soliciting them for gay Internet sex and the head of an evangelical organization with having gay hooker sex on crystal meth. But I digress.
Steven Taylor notes something interesting in the Virginia numbers that Mike Krempasky and I discussed last night: “there were a substantial number of persons who voted for the the marriage amendment who did not vote for Allen—demonstrating that he clearly had alienated some of his natural voter base.”
While it’s undeniably true that Allen alienated some of his base, I think the main explanation for this is that black and Hispanic voters, who naturally vote Democrat, are actually quite culturally conservative. My strong guess is that an overwhelming number of blacks and Hispanics voted for Jim Webb and against gay marriage.
I should note, for the record, that I voted for Allen and against the amendment. While I understand that enacting my preference (which didn’t happen in either case, it appears) would have left open the possibility of the courts imposing gay marriage against the wishes of the people of the Commonwealth–which I oppose–an amendment denying the legislature the right to recognize changing cultural mores down the line struck me as more pernicious.
