So I bet someone 10 bucks that SSM will be legal everywhere within 5 years. Too optimistic? And do civil unions count as marriages?
Do you mean everywhere in the US, or everywhere in the world? If Obama is re-elected I think it’s possible we’ll see gay marriage recognized throughout the US, but I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely that it will be recognized by 2017 in, say, Mauritania, where it’s not currently even legal to have gay sex.
Everywhere? Even in the Islamic world? Wow, I want to make some bets with you.
“Everywhere” within the U.S., or “everywhere” around the world?
If just the U.S., I’d say within 25 years. The whole world? Not for a very, very, very long time, if ever.
What- there’s other places in the world besides the US? 
Sorry, yes- I mean in the US.
It will take a few decades for it to be legalized in every state in the US. It will be more common, but it’s unlikely that Bible Belt states would even consider it.
Worldwide, it might take centuries.
Maryland leans heavily blue and the state legislature legalized gay marriage there recently. There was enough backlash that a citizen’s petition has succeeded in getting the issue put on the November ballot as a referendum. I think it’s a coin flip whether or not it will be repealed.
If *Maryland *shows this much resistance, I don’t think you are going to see much movement toward gay marriage as long as people have the vote. If the Supreme Court gets involved a la Roe v. Wade, then who knows?
But my guess is that you just lost $10.
10 years or so. Like a lot of other social issues, there is a generational problem in the way. Once the worst of the oldsters die off or retire permanently from service, we’ll see movement on this issue.
I think five years is pretty optimistic, but not unrealistic. My money is on 10, give or take two, for a range of 8-12 for those bad at math.
Yep. I’m thinking when Generation Y comes into political power. About 20 years.
How do you mean “legal”? I could see there being a period where states are forced to grudgingly accept accept out-of-state same-sex marriages but not actually perform them.
I agree with this, there are some pretty conservative states that will be hesitant to legalize SSM even if they’re in the small minority. I’m looking at you, Utah.
I’m no expert, by far, but I was thinking that it will be resolved through the courts, rather than the vote.
5 years seems optimistic, but looking back it was only around 1999-2000 that the Vermont Civil Union situation created the first same-sex union in the country. Massachusetts same-sex marriage happened in May 2004. Things are moving faster than I expected they would.
I think it will either be in a couple years if the supreme court rules on the prop 8 thing from California in the most liberal/universally applying way (very, VERY doubtful), or it will be decades.
They might repeal DOMA though within 5 or 10 years, and who knows what that would do.
I’d guess 5 years until half the states have it, then some backlash for a while. 30 years from now about 48 states will have SSM with maybe two holdouts (yes, I’m looking at you Alabama.) In the mean time there will be all kinds of legal wrangling about what it means for two same sex people to be married. We will be finding old laws that explicitly reference husband and wife for example and it will need to be fought out in court what that now means.
Sad, but, yeah, that’s the greater likelihood. Loving v. Virginia: the legislature(s) didn’t even have the guts to permit blacks and whites to marry, and the courts had to do the right thing.
Q: What is “Absolute Truth?”
A: A five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court.
No way. Either the Supreme Court of the United States will have ruled in its favor, or it will have ruled against, and there will be more than two holdouts.
I think that’s about right. And if the SCOTUS rules in favor of SSM, I think that will guarantee a Republican landslide in Congress and the Presidency. It would be almost as bad for the Democrats as overturning Roe would be for the Republicans.
Well, if it does that, the resistant states will likely all write civil marriage out of their statutes entirely.
It’s possible, but I think unlikely, for the SCt to rule on the Prop 8 case in a way that requires SSM nationwide. The trial court’s reasoning striking down Prop 8, if adopted by the SCt, would apply nationwide, while the appellate court attempted to find a way to limit its ruling to California. This attempt was somewhat unconvincing in my view, and in my opinion, the Ninth Circuit has effectively mandated SSM throughout its jurisdiction. I may be alone in this view, however, at least until we see if litigants in Idaho and Montana try to use it that way.
I think it’s most likely that the SCt will simply decline to review the Prop 8 decision.