This question isn’t really about the likelihood of that happening, just what the political result would be, based on the decisions that have already come down.
Would the GOP give up the issue completely? Somewhat? On paper? Would it gain in intensity (this seems unlikely to me) or fade away? Would it become the next Roe v. Wade with people arguing the court moved too soon, or the next Loving where people look back and wonder what took so long?
This isn’t about SSM as a good or bad thing. If you want to talk about that, go to another thread.
Cynically, I wonder if it would be bad for Democrats.
Just like Republicans used Gay Marriage as a wedge issue to drive voters to the polls in 2004, I expected Democrats to do the same in 2016. If SCOTUS issue a ruling allowing SSM, then that wedge issue doesn’t exist for the Democrats, thus giving single-issue voters less motivation to turn out. I don’t know if that would affect the result (given that we don’t even know the candidates for 2016), but it’s something I would worry about if I was a Democratic strategist.
As far as movements against the issue, I think it will be much like Loving v. Virginia and less like Roe v. Wade. Conservatives will realize the issue doesn’t really affect them, and it’s hard to get worked up about something that has been going on for a while and hasn’t caused you any problems. Abortion is different - when you literally believe babies are being killed, you’re more likely to continue the fight. When someone you think is going to hell anyway is doing something that would also be a sin… eh, hard to get worked up over.
Don’t get me wrong, I very much hope SCOTUS rules in favor of marriage equality sooner rather than later.
I don’t think Republicans would move away from it just yet. There’d have to be the big backlash first. They’ve still got the Tea Party, and they are still pushing people to be as far right as possible. “I’m against the Federal government legislating that I have to violate my religion and tolerate gay people,” will probably still be a very tenable position.
I do think it will fade away faster than abortion (which still hasn’t after 50 years), but it will take longer than a couple years, too.
It will further show the impotence of social conservatism. The rump end of the right-wing will freak out, and pretty much nothing will happen.
Except that I’m hopeful that, as some Republicans start to support SSM (because duh), the rump-right will split off into a third party, further consigning the Republican party (in its present form) to the dustbin of history.
I dunno – in the wake of such a ruling, the Republicans will be under extreme pressure from the wingnuts to endorse a constitutional amendment, and would have to choose between offending the wingnuts by dodging the issue or offending sensible* people by capitulating.
*On this side, they’d get it with both barrels, from both the “this is bigoted and wrong” and the “tell us about issues where you might actually accomplish something” varieties of “sensible”.
I do think there would be some pushback from both fronts if they pushed for an amendment, which is a non-starter. Even 15 years ago it wouldn’t have been possible to enshrine a lack of SSM into the constitution, except maybe if the amendment also provided for civil unions. That ship has sailed of course and even that wouldn’t pass these days.
The only places where a push for an anti-ssm amendment would help the GOP are places where they don’t need any help.
I guess it could help more with fundraising, since anyone can donate no matter what state or district they come from, and I don’t think any sensible money would go to the Democrats to defeat an anti-SSM amendment because it would never happen.
But in the few swing states/districts remaining, I’m just not seeing a huge turnout caused by an anti-SSM amendment, at least when you balance out some voters who would turn out to vote against it. I think swing districts tend to be moderate both in quantity and quality, having fewer radical rightists.
Considering the craziness of the Tea Bagger wing, I have no doubt that they’ll continue to try to fight it, this time by endorsing an amendment.
Also, look at what the states are doing. A lot of them are trying to pass these “religious freedom” bills that are basically laws that lets them discriminate. Even if the SCOTUS makes SSM legal, I don’t think we’d be able to get sexual orientation into federal law as a protected class. As long as that window is open, there will continue to be these Hobby Lobby type challenges
The biggest utility for Reps would be as another example of the activist courts legislating from the bench. Then there’d be the usual “forcing it down our throats” language (oh baby).
I think they would drop the gay issue like a hot potato. Right wingers already decry the topic as a subject of debate at all, pro or anti, since there’s more important stuff to worry about.
As a Republican I see it as a good thing for issues like SSM to be decided and pushed out of the public realm. The conservative party will always do poorly when society is rapidly changing its values, and that is what is happening with SSM. [My personal opinion on SSM has always been there is zero legal or constitutional support for the various judicial rulings enabling it, but I’d be fine if every State or even the Federal government passed laws that saw it practiced in all fifty states–SSM has no impact on me as an atheist with no moral qualms against homosexuals.]
I lived through Roe v. Wade and Loving, although I wasn’t quite old enough in Loving to form clear opinions on it (Roe was in my late teens when I had a lot of political opinions, but I was still a practicing Catholic until my early 20s so that informed a lot of my early views on it.) My impression (could be wrong since I wasn’t quite old enough to fully appreciate it) is that Loving wasn’t that controversial. A lot of people even in the South where I lived didn’t really buy into the idea that the government should prohibit blacks and whites from marrying, most that I knew would have found it scandalous if any mixed race couples lived in our town, but I can remember my grandmother saying that if they want to get married it’s far better to let them do that than to have them live in sin–and that was a pretty prevalent opinion in my family at least.
I’d say SSM right now is a bit more controversial, probably because it’s basically unprecedented in human history. Whites had been marrying other races in America back to the colonial days, and out West intermarriage with Natives was very, very common. Several famous Confederate generals had Native wives, actually. I think Pickett may have in fact. While blacks were always viewed differently than Natives, to a degree the genie was long out of the bottle on interracial relationships.
In 2004 SSM was the perfect issue to get us votes in swing states like Ohio that were still slightly socially conservative. By 2012 I’d say it was already an albatross in many States, and by 2016 the only States where the GOP party line on SSM will help are States so red that we never needed that issue helping the party in the first place.
Abortion is a separate issue, and polling consistently shows that abortion is an extremely divisive issue with roughly equal ardent proponents of both sides. I have a strict non-moral view of abortion based on the social value of destroying unwanted babies, but most people look at abortion through a moral lens of either fetal life or women’s reproductive rights (two issues of zero moral concern to me.) With such a large swathe of the country being pro-life and pro-choice, I think it inevitable that in a two party system one party is going to be one side and the other the alternative–although for a long time you could be a Pro Choice Republican (now outlawed) and there are still Pro Life Democrats (like Joe Manchin, and more on the State Government level, Reid used to be at least technically Pro Life.)
Until the Tea Party relinquishes control of the social issue agenda for the Republican Party, SSM will be a plus for Democrats whether it is fully legalized or not. When the mainstream Republicans get the political will to tell Tea Partiers “Screw you, SSM is here to stay so suck it up, buttercups” then SSM will slowly fade as a political issue for either side. I think for the next 10 years or so, Republicans will be made to pay lip service to the anti-SSM crowd in order to avoid primary challenges from the right.
There was a time (2004 being a great example) that Republicans could crank up turnout from their base by putting anti-gay measures on the ballot. That ship has sailed and sunk. Now they have the stigma of being anti-gay for probably a generation to come, reputations take a while to lose once they become ingrained. So if the Supreme Court met in emergency session tomorrow and made SSM legal everywhere, it still will be a political liability for the right.
I meant recently. Obviously if I just meant American history it’s not been strictly true since the 1990s when some form of legalized gay marriage or unions started in parts of the United States (D.C. had domestic partnerships as did Hawaii in the 90s, many States have adopted SSM in the 2000s/2010s.) Prior to Denmark recognizing civil unions in 1989 I’m not aware of any historical precedent for same sex marriage. It really defies all the historical cultural reasons that marriage exist anyway since it’s tied up with things like property ownership and inheritance and traditionally two men or two women would produce no heirs.
Although the Romans had sort of short-circuited some of that (not for SSM reasons but for dynastic ones) when powerful Patricians would name nephews or even just close male subordinates as “adopted” heirs of sorts.
It will cause a brief burst of outrage, but will soon die as an issue in the following decade. Conservatives will claim twenty years from now that they always supported same sex marriage, that homophobia is over, and that liberals are the real homophobes.
I think for the next 6 to 10 years it bolsters GOP coffers with the backlash from social conservatives and then dies as an issue. This issue is unlike abortion and more like interracial marriage in that it is generational.
I don’t believe that it hurts or helps either party at the polls. Hard core voters on either side mostly have their minds made up, but the shift is in the middle. The middle of the road twenty percent of voters have gone from “I don’t really give a shit and see no reason to change the definition of marriage” to “I don’t really give a shit so why not let gays marry?”