Will gay marriage ever be legalized in the United States?
There have been many court verdicts deeming the bans on gay marriage to be unjust and unconstitutional. Yet the Will of the People, as it showed again on Tuesday, is that all rights should not be made available to all, regardless what the courts feel. Some prejudice must be ok.
I don’t have an educated opinion on this topic, and I am asking those of you who respond on this site to educate me. I trust you more than the media.
It appears that all of those that are against gay marriage are radical church zealots. Is that true? Are there religious people for gay marriage?
It appears that all of those that are for gay marriage are older, gay people. Is that true? Are there gay people against gay marriage?
Do you think there will be a time where this will not be a relevant issue?
A part of that trend is age. Older people are more opposed to gay marriage than younger people. But about 1.5% of the electorate dies each year and is replaced by young people.
As an example, in Wisconsin about 60% of young people support gay marriage and only about 24% of the elderly do. So every year 1.5%~ of the oldest electorate dies and is replaced by young people. The gap in support between young and old voters is about 35 points from what I can tell. So if 1.5% of the electorate dies and the new voters have a 35 point higher margin in supporting gay marriage that works out to a 0.5% annual boost in support of gay marriage. Seeing how states like Maine or California only lost their ballot initiatives by 6 and 2 percent respectively, it shouldn’t be long.
And that is just due to age. I would assume that as more and more people are exposed to gay marriage then people of all races and ages will become more open.
I was actually thinking about this last night. I think the pro-equal rights folks should adopt a “fatigue” strategy. Keep putting it on the ballot. Over and over and over again if necessary. Force the bigots to keep spending money to defeat it. Eventually they’ll get tired of it (and in the meantime it has the general social benefit of tying up large sums of money that might otherwise be used to try to advance other aspects of the theocracy agenda.
Look, yes, the answer is yes. It’s obviously yes, which is why the idiots who can’t bear it are pouring so much time and effort into holding off the inevitable for a few more years. Look at the vast difference between the way the issue is perceived today and the way it was perceived 20 years ago. Now consider that the most reliable anti-gay-marriage bloc in this country is senior citizens, who have a tendency to - not to be insensitive here - die in large quantities. They will be replaced as voters by people who grew up watching (and liking) Neil Patrick Harris and listening to Elton John and reading David Sedaris. They’ll be replaced by voters for whom gay people are peers no different than any other peer.
Twenty years from now, marriage rights will have been extended to homosexual couples everywhere in this country. Forty years from now, those who oppose it today will be viewed in exactly the same light as we now view George Wallace circa 1963.
It’s slow, folks, and this Maine thing pisses me off. But the fact of it is that nowadays, the vast majority of people aren’t really opposed to marriage equality - they’re just apathetic. Sad as that sounds, it’s really the first step toward where we’re going. Fifty years ago, 80% of this country was against this thing, at a guess, to the point where there wasn’t active vocal opposition to it because even the premise was unthinkable. Today, far fewer are against it. It’s just that right now, those who are against it care about it enough to get to the polls, and those who are for it - or just don’t think about it much - don’t. In time, those who oppose it will continue to die, and those who are in the middle will slowly come to see this - as it is - as an affront to the principles on which their country is built, and it’ll swing so fast your head will spin. And we’ll leave the bigots mumbling on the side of the road, until history runs them down.
Yes there are, but the degree of support varies considerably.
For example, the Episcopalian Church has been wracked by controversy on this issue for the past ten years and will likely to continue to be so for the foreseable future. But in the referendum on same-sex marriage in California, all of the California Episcopalian Bishops came out in support of gay marriage, under the civil law of the state: Calif. Episcopal bishops oppose gay marriage ban:
IMHO many if not most of those who oppose gay marriage don’t believe in homosexuality, as an orientation. That is, they think that, deep down, everyone’s really, fundamentally heterosexual, and that those who engage in sex/love/etc. with their own sex are either deliberately, pervertedly going against their own fundamental nature, or have some sort of a disorder. Given that axiom, opposition to gay marriage makes a certain amount of sense—it may indeed go against what marriage is supposed to be for a heterosexual to marry someone of their own sex.
If and when people get educated and come to understand what it means to be homosexual, I think attitudes will change and gay marriage will become accepted and legal.
One thing that will help is for more and more people to get to know same-sex couples, either in real life or on TV, who are “normal” and loving and stable and psychologically healthy and who make you think, “These people really ought to be allowed to marry one another.”
I’m thinking that in fewer than 10 years we see at least 20 states with legalized same sex marriage. Within 20 years it will have become a true federal issue and be be legalized through the whole ‘states should recognize marriages of other states’ thing.
In my political opinion this thing is right on he edge of overdrive.
I think this age thing is really key. There is really an unusually-large division along this line on this particular issue. Even in my own family, who are all quite liberal and supportive gay marriage, there is an interesting cultural difference with age: After my cousin came out and told her family that she was lesbian and was involved in a serious relationship with another woman, my uncle and aunt passed on the news to my mom. And, when my mom then told me the news and she was surprised at just how little reaction I had to learning this…and she mused, “Your sister was the same way when I told her the news.” This surprised my mom a bit because, even though my parents are liberal-minded and were very supportive of my cousin and such, it was still in some sense a “bigger deal” for them to learn that she was gay than it was for my sister or me. I guess part of it is because in their generation, it just wasn’t dealt with so openly so they had less experience with openly gay friends and colleagues.
I think as the older generations who hold fast to tradition die off and are replaced by younger generations that have come to see homosexuality as a normal part of society, gay marriage will be eventually legalized. I think the “out and proud” mentality that is more permissable these days than 50 years ago is helping younger generations think of being gay as no big deal. When I went to high school 10 years ago, there was nobody out. My BF is a high school teacher and he notes that kids are coming out earlier now. Slowly, our society is changing.
If the situation in the Netherlands is any indication, I think that even within Obama’s presidency some form of legal civil union between SScouples will be made legal. Actual marriage… now that might take longer.
In the Netherlands, we had SS civil uinons in 1992 and gay marriages about five years later.
The first wave is a minority group organizing to fight discrimination.
The second wave are bigots opposing the minority and fighting to preserve the discrimination.
The third wave is society in general becoming repulsed by the bigots and the injustice of the discrimination and coming to accept the minoirty group as equals.
I don’t see it made legal in all 50 states except by an act of the SCOTUS, which will only happen when the court changes from the present make-up to have a majority “liberal” bench. Too many states have constitutional amendments banning SSM, and I can’t see all of them being changed by the electorate.
If Congress repeals DOMA, and most states choose to allow gay marriage, the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution will force the remaining states to recognize gay couples married elsewhere in the U.S. as married.
So even if gay couples won’t be able to get hitched everywhere, they’ll be able to live happily ever after as legally married couples everywhere.
Or, at least, repealing the (blatantly unconstitutional and misleadingly named) Defense of Marriage Act.
Yes. In fact there was recently a big bruhaha (brewhaha? breujaja?) at the church I used to go to, in my small, small, conservative hometown. (The church is part of the UCC, if it makes any difference.) The minister left, and they had an interim minster, who happened to be a lesbian. One of the candidates for a permanent minister was also a lesbian, who had a long-term, monogamous partner, and they were probably going to take advantage of CT’s laws and get married, if they came here. Some member, or members, (who was/were apparently okay with a lesbian as an interim minister, but not okay with a married lesbian as a permanent minister) sent a letter to all church members (an unsigned letter, because he/she/they is/are so courageous) saying how this shouldn’t happen. Others, such as my parents, had no problem with the idea of a married gay minister. In the end the church ended up getting a straight, married man as a permanent minister (to avoid conflict), but the point is, even within congregations, in a conservative town there can be a difference of opinion.
Absolutely. But I disagree with those who say voting against SSM will someday be seen as bad as, say, being against giving blacks the right to vote.
It will be seen as even worse. Because it is.
At least the people against letting blacks vote were actually affected by the issue. The more people in general who are allowed to vote, the less effective one’s vote becomes. As shitty and greedy and wrong as they were, they at least had some valid self-serving logic.
The anti-SSM people will be seen by history as people who voted to deny people rights that would not have affected them it the slightest. And even if they truly believed the “weakening traditional marriage” argument, then they’ll be seen as absolute idiots too.
