More on Arizona's bucking the trend.

As previously noted, of the eight states with anti-gay marriage initiatives on their respective ballots, Arizona (Arizona?) was the only state to NOT pass such an initiative. Why?

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has an idea. (You might have to sit through a free daypass to access the article. Well worth the time, IMHO).

Anyway, Glenn's theory is that the Arizona referendum failed not because of a sudden willingness of Arizonians to accept gay marriage per se, but it failed because of an aversion on their part to permit the government to meddle in their personal affairs.

From the article:

the successful campaign to defeat the Arizona referendum was based on a
generalized libertarian aversion to governmental intrusion into the private
sphere, rather than support for gay marriage per se. And therein lies the most
significant lesson to be drawn from the weakening support for these referendums
in 2006 -- namely, the rejection by Western states of the activist social
conservative agenda that has fueled the Republican Party's dominance of the
South.

In other words, Western state voters are more inclined to have a MYOB-type philosophy than are the social conservatives who dominate the Republican party these days. I can buy that. As noted below, the Colorado anti-gay initiatives passed, but not by the wide margins seen in other states, and Referendum I (giving gay couples legal rights) actually led in the polls for a long while.