Four states will consider gay-marriage measures on Nov. 6. Voters in Maine (Question 1), Maryland (Question 6), and Washington (Referendum 74) will decide whether to approve same-sex marriage laws, while Minnesota voters will vote on a constitutional amendment that would ban such recognition.

Cato as an institution takes no position on state ballot initiatives, but it has devoted a lot of attention to the underlying issues. In May of last year (see the video below), we hosted a panel discussion with the co-counsels of the case challenging California's Prop 8, Theodore ("no relation") Olson and David Boies, and co-plaintiffs John Podesta and Robert Levy (who is also Cato's chairman).

Below the jump are some other contributions by Catoites.

♦  Cato Vice President David Boaz has written about the ongoing-for-centuries process by which marriage has been "redefined" into something very different from its premodern form, on the steady advance of support for gay marriage in opinion polls, and on how the resulting politics of the issue has turned unfavorable for the national Republican Party.

♦  This summer, Cato Publications Director David Lampo published A Fundamental Freedom: Why Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians Should Support Gay Rights (Rowman & Littlefield), available here. He appeared at a Cato forum to discuss the book with columnist Michael Barone and Cato's John Samples. Here's the video:

David's other media appearances have included Reason.tv and Cato's daily podcast, and he's written op-eds for the Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun.

♦  Ilya Shapiro and Robert Levy reacted to the federal court decisions holding California's Prop 8 invalid

♦  Jason Kuznicki discussed his Cato Policy Analysis, "Marriage against the State: Toward a New View of Civil Marriage."

♦  In March, when the legislature in my own state of Maryland acted to recognize same-sex marriage, I explained why I put little stock in arguments warning of family disintegration, since statistics indicate that adoption of these laws "neither causes nor correlates with divorce or out-of-wedlock birth rates above Western norms." I've also written about both the religious-accommodation angle and the importance of keeping law separate from church doctrine.