In this scenario it was been decided that same sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states.
What changes for the better?
What changes for the worse?
Freedom and equality would measurably have gone up.
Same sex marriage couples will now have to deal with the same issues of divorce and such that straight couples have to deal with. 
Conservatives of a certain stripe will NEVER get this country back to the 50’s after this. Plus, we’ll need a new thing to start wrangling about (probably gun control will be back on the menu…not that it ever really left).
- Hallmark cashes in cha-CHING!
- More churches advance the idea of religious “straight” marriages.
Changes for the better – gay couples have equal access to the benefits of marriage. Marriage will be seen, in the long term, as a stronger and more desirable institution. More young people, gay and straight, will want to get married. Gay people will continue to be less stigmatized. There will be a small economic benefit due to increased spending on weddings and related activity. Anti-gay bigotry will continue to be marginalized, and anti-gay rhetoric will eventually be considered as unacceptable as anti-black or anti-Jewish rhetoric.
Changes for the worse – none. No churches will be forced to conduct gay marriages. No one will be forced to photograph or bake cakes for gay weddings.
Changes for the better: Bigots’ heads explode en masse.
Changes for the worse: Lots of mess to mop up afterward.
I would really like to hear about the horrible things that will happen to marriage and/or our country that have been hinted at over and over again in these two threads.
(bolding added) Can you elaborate as to why this would change if SSM were legal in all states? Does that mean that sexual orientation would cease being a protected category (if I understand correctly) so that businesses would be able to refuse to serve anyone based on sexual orientation?
Quite possibly I have this wrong, but I thought that there were various cases around where businesses that turned away customers due to sexual orientation were being successfully sued for discrimination.
I don’t think discrimination status changes when you get married.
Then why didn’t you tell us that from the start and list some of those horrible things? There is no way that I am digging through those threads to find those nuggets of wisdom.
In the end, nothing will really change except a significant slice of people will have more civil rights as is appropriate. It’s been legal here in California for many months and nothing has changed for the worse in any way.
Changes for the better–my potential client base for family law cases expands dramatically. Options for placing children in good adoptive homes increase. Equal justice under the law has wider application.
Changes for the worse–hmmm—not really seeing any.
Quoting myself from the other thread:
There’s an answer to the question of who SSM will harm. I was thinking about it recently, and it seems that it’s a group with potential standing to sue to stop SSM:
Beards.
For centuries, there have been straight women who struggle to attract a husband. They want to be married, but they are for whatever reason so unattractive to any suitable mate that no straight man will marry them.
Fortunately they’ve always had a solution. Gay men don’t need to be attracted to their wives; they just need a wife, period. They need someone to marry them to confer all the legal and social advantages of marriage. As long as they can’t marry the men they love, many of them have settled for marrying a woman they don’t much care about.
SSM removes this option for most such women. This social change harms these potential beards by removing their potential mates. They should sue.
I don’t know if there’s such a term for men who previously would have married lesbians, but given that the women are named as if they provide a gay man with a secondary sexual characteristic befitting a man, I suggest that men who marry lesbians be called boobs, and should likewise sue.
Consistency among the states as to the status of a SSM, and I do feel with that will come acceptance.
Confusing and perhaps reevaluation as to what marriage means, which could cause unpredictable results (good, bad or indifferent).
I suppose that this could develop into a debate, but currently it is a polling of opinions.
Off to IMHO.
LHoD, there’s still hope for those beards who can still find the deep-in-denial and/or self-hating (typically: uber-religious) gay men.
For the better - equal treatment for same sex couples under the law, no matter where in the country you live.
For the worse - Depends on your view. I don’t see any objective negative outcome. Although, I know people that think treating same sex relationships as equal to opposite sex ones is a bad thing. Children will grow up thinking that it’s ok (which in their view, it isn’t). The country will continue it’s downhill slide into immorality and condemn us all to hell.
I think it’s a bit possible, though I’m not sure how likely, that the legal treatment of marriage might suffer a bit. If the bloom is off the rose for reactionary types, they might start attacking some of the benefits of marriage. I don’t think it would be particularly successful, but who knows?
A lawmaker in Oklahoma has already proposed abolishing civil marriage to spite gay people. It doesn’t seem to be a very popular idea…so far.
Just because someone’s gay, it doesn’t mean they HAVE TO get married. And just because SSM is legal, it doesn’t mean all gay people are open and out and no longer struggling with their sexual identity.
There are still people, in fact lots of them, who don’t want their sons and daughters to marry - or even date - someone of a different ethnicity or religion.
Even with universal marriage equality, we have a long way to go before ridding the country of racism and antisemitism and homophobia.
These questions are too simplistic. Just leave these people … alone.
I’ve seen a decent number of older gay-people mourn the decline of a lot of gay-culture and gay institutions that were created back when being openly gay was taboo. I imagine that decline will continue as the last big institutional barrier against gays ends.
Granted I doubt even people who feel that way would really call it “worse”. The change is certainly for the better. But I think its natural for marginalized groups to set up and become attached to their own cultural practices and institutions, and then miss feel nostalgic for those institutions as they lose their purpose once the group ceases to be marginalized.