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« More misheard lyrics | Main | Obsessive website of the week » Friday, April 27, 2007Gay Marriage recapitulates Abolition?Remember those graphics that got emailed around in '04, the ones comparing the pro-Confederacy states with the 2004 election map? You don't? Here's a reminder:   Well, in 2003, the historian and public intellectual Caleb Crain had a similar brainstorm. On his blog Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, he wondered whether the order in which states abolished slavery in the late 18th and early 19th centuries would predict the order in which they instituted gay marriages or civil unions in the late 20th and early 21st. At the time, Crain recalled in an update yesterday, he had only two data points, Vermont and Massachusetts. But the first four states to abolish slavery were: Vermont (1777), Pennsylvania (1780), Massachusetts (1783), and New Hampshire (1783). So Crain made a bold prediction: "If the pattern holds, don't hold your breath for same-sex marriage in New York, despite its ultraliberal reputation. Look for it next in Pennsylvania ... or in crusty, Republican New Hampshire." Seemed far-fetched at the time, but yesterday, the New Hampshire legislature passed a bill authorizing same-sex unions, which the governor is expected to sign. Returning to his research, Crain says: "My new prediction, then: gay marriage in Pennsylvania, which looks overdue." (I would add: or Rhode Island.) See Crain's table, below.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:46 AM
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