How gay rights tipped so quickly

Yahoo! News / The Week ^ | March 26, 2013 | Marc Ambinder

[2ndDivisionVet]

In some ways, today's Supreme Court arguments over California's proposition 8 were overshadowed by the decision of several Democratic senators from red or purple states to openly and active support marriage equality. Actually, even that pales in comparison to Richard Land, the key Southern Baptist political evangelist, who just said, basically, "nevermind," when it comes to the next generation of evangelicals being uncomfortable about gay rights. (To be sure, he still opposes gay rights, still thinks that gay marriage will lead to polygamy, and believes that anti-gay leaders are being ostracized from polite society.) On that last part, he's kind of correct. The zone of tolerance for acceptable viewpoints has narrowed very quickly.

Why has the structure of the gay rights debate shifted so quickly? The Week's Peter Weber has found six reasons. I have some guesses, a few obvious ones, and a few not-so-obvious, and I'm going to try to put them in order of importance.

First: Harvey Milk had it right. All politics is personal. Self-identified gays make up about 3 and a half percent of the population. That means that almost everyone with a social life in America knows someone who is gay. In fact, nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed say that someone close to them is gay. (Sarah Palin's best friend is gay.) Of those who've changed their minds on the issue, the plurality say that they simply expanded their circle of empathy because their circle came include gay people.

But here's the important point: in order for this to happen, gay people had to take risks and come out. So: the pressure within the gay community to stigmatize "the closet," a pressure that can be pretty intense at times, has paid off........

[Ann Archy]

This push is also to UNDERMINE CHRISTIANITY, ESPECIALLY Catholicism!!!! Gays are already getting married in Jewish Temples, God FORBID) and some Lefty Churches are doing this also.

[Always A Marine]

"Once the barrier to gays serving in the military fell, and...nothing apocalyptic happened, and once a few states began to experiment with gay marriage, and...nothing apocalyptic happened, the only remaining arguments against same-sex unions are religious and provincial. They're small. They're associated with bigotry. No one wants to be a bigot." -Marc Armbinder

"Nothing apocalyptic happened" - yet. History records years in words and decades in sentences, and its messages are clear and its patient work should not be mistaken for exception. The laws of Nature and Nature's God are certain, and God is not mocked. America is shaking its collective fist at what it knows is true, and we will be judged severely. Perhaps not today or next week, but the day is coming.