So it looks like the good people of the Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage are getting closer to banning gay marriage in the Sunshine State. By early next week, they should have enough signatures on their petition to put before the Florida Supreme Court an amendment that would "protect and preserve natural marriage between one man and one woman."

Of course, nothing about his front of the culture war is new. Just short of 20 states have already beaten Florida to the proverbial punch. The fact that this movement has continued past the state-to-state ballots of 2004 is troubling. Kansas jumped on the gay-hatin' train in April of this year. Texas has a same-sex amendment on its ballots for November 2005, and South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee will vote on similar legislation in November 2006. It appears that the far right will reap the benefits of this political capital for years to come.

Now, I don't pretend to have a finger directly on the pulse of this state; I've never taken any rudimentary state history course, and my brief time on the Dong has been spent in the insulated environment of the English Department here in Gainesville. That said, I think Florida may offer one of the few opportunities for this kind of legalized discrimination not to be passed.

At the risk of oversimplifying the politics of states that have already passed anti-gay marriage legislation, I think it's worth considering that Florida actually does have a gay population. And that gay population might be big enough to fight back, especially if the amendment shows up on a ballot that doesn't host a major national election. What I mean is that most of the states that now have gay marriage bans--say, for example, Utah--have smaller gay populations that couldn't contend with waves of crazed right wingers, apathetic moderates, and disinterested progressives. What if the gay population in Miami--that virile tip of the Liberty Dong--could muster enough votes to cripple the anti-gay movement in Florida?

Again, this is all a long-shot. Pure conjecture. But what if Florida--the land of Death without Dignity, the state that deprived many of its black citizens of their votes in 2000--somehow rebuffed a gay marriage ban? Wouldn't that be something?