ABSTRACT
In 2008, Florida voters approved the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, 1 also known as Proposition 2, by a margin of 62.1 percent to 37.9 percent, making Florida the 27th state to prohibit legal recognition of same-sex marriage by amending its state constitution. This chapter explores the electoral geographies of Proposition 2 by examining the spatial distribution of the vote through a lens of the cultural politics of sexuality. I begin with a brief overview of the scalar implications of the debate on same sex marriage in the United Sates, followed by a discussion of Florida’s “place” in the national debate. I then examine the socio-cultural implications of the debate that lead up to the actual vote, taking a cue from the recent subgenre of work that invokes a critical and post-positivist approach towards the cultural politics of sexuality and electoral outcomes (see, for example Brown, Knopp, and Morrill, 2005; Rasmussen, 2006; Webster, Chapman, and Leib, 2010). I conclude with a discussion of the spatial outcome of the vote, revealing a multiplicity of cultural, social, and political geographies at the local scale.
