Ok’d in California by today’s state supreme court ruling. Majority of folks under 35 can’t figure out what took so long, and the demographic trends toward greater acceptance couldn’t be more plain. I expect gay marriage to be common and sanctioned by most state governments within the next 5-10 years. But I could be wrong: It might be much sooner.
I recall pondering gay marriage back in the late ’80s and early ’90s and while such a concept was uncomfortable at the time, I could never come up with an argument against it. I lost any discomfort about it a long time ago and now regard with a fair amount of distain gay marriage opponents precisely because I don’t think there are any valid arguments against it.
Of course here I’m talking about civil marriage, those covenants recognized by the state. Religious institutions–most of whom continue to piously claim “God is Love” (but, uh, not your love)–will continue to discriminate as they see fit, and that is their right.
But those institutions–like the Catholic Church, the right-wing of the Anglican church, and various fundamentalist Christian denominations–will ultimately need to change their take on the issue or be increasingly marginalized on the topic.
Indeed, example 1A is the Catholic Church’s ban on artificial birth control. The vast majority of Catholics in the US pay no heed whatsoever to the Church’s position and the Church has lost its ability to speak authoritatively on the topic, with millions of US Catholics happily using condoms and other Church-proscribed methods without any consideration whatsoever of the Church’s position. The same thing will happen regarding gay rights, if it hasn’t already.
But that aside, the key point is this: Today was a good day for civil rights. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration had nothing to do with it.