Several hours have now passed since the news broke that the Vermont legislature had over-ridden the governor's veto and legalized marriage equality in the state.
Last week, when the Iowa Supreme Court issued its own marriage ruling, Religious Right groups unleashed a flood of press releases and statements decrying the decision, blasting the "activist" judges responsible for it and vowing to help the state pass a constitutional amendment overturning the ruling.
But apparently the Right's standard talking points about "activists judges" and "the will of the people" aren't going to work this this time, now that the Vermont has enacted marriage equality through the legislative process and so it seems as if they are struggling on how to respond.
Hours have now passed and we have not heard a peep out of any of the groups who traditionally use such developments as a cudgel with which they can wage their culture war - not the Family Research Council; not the Eagle Forum; not the Traditional Values Coalition; not the Alliance Defense Fund; not Concerned Women for America ... not even Peter LaBarbera and his Americans for Truth. All of these groups rushed out releases in the hours following the Iowa decision yet, as of this writing, not one has weighed in on this development.
In fact, Christian Newswire, the distribution source of choice for right-wing groups, has not one press release up from anyone at all regarding the Vermont decision.
So far, all we have found that even remotely qualifies as commentary is this OneNewsNow article, which has a well-established history of changing AP stories to fit its own right-wing bias, in which they put the word "marriage" in quotation marks. The AP version looks like this:
Vermont legalizes gay marriage with veto override
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.
Whereas the ONN reads like this:
Vermont legalizes same-sex 'marriage' with veto override
MONTPELIER, VT - Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize homosexual "marriage" -- and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.
As much as they might oppose it, the Vermont legislature has given gays the right to marry on equal terms with everybody else and no amount of scare quotes from OneNewsNow or any other right-wing outlet is going to change that.
Undoubtedly, there will be some sort of statements released by these groups in the near future and we'll chronicle them when they are ... but it is worth noting that it sure does seem to be taking them an awfully long time trying to figure out what to say about it.
