E-mail of the day: Overheard at the mall

A friend went to Valley West Mall in Des Moines this weekend. He went into a sports shop...

At the counter there are 3 guys who appear to work there. All three start going off about gay marriage, using profanity loudly and using words referencing gays in a terrible way, and the worst part was, they didnt care how many customers were in the store or who heard it. It made my girlfriend uncomfortable so we left. To me they looked like 3 dudes that were rather redneck. I shrugged it off as they looked like three guys who could have easily lived with their grandma's and haven't amounted to anything else other than a sports shop worker in a mall so I didn't think much of it.

But then the more I think about it, I hope this isn't the majority thought on the subject.

Two thoughts: 1. This was not part of a rural "hick" town in Iowa. 2. Imagine the 3 guys in the store making racial, sexual or Hispanic jokes. Those jokes are still told but now they are told behind closed doors.

Bashing gays publicly is still acceptable.

Nate Silver on a gay marriage vote

In the run up to the 2008 election Nate Silver's analysis at 538 was a daily must read. He not only summarized all of the polls but he also explained why some polls were good and some were bad.

Nate believes if the state of Iowa voted today an anti-gay marriage amendment would pass with 56% of the vote. By 2012 he projects it will be just slightly over 50%... meaning, too close to call.

I think his numbers are slightly optimistic, but this is the guy who nailed pretty much every primary last spring.