America's sudden change of heart on same-sex marriage

[brooklynite]

Axios

Compared to the decades and decades it took to dismantle Jim Crow laws or secure women's right to vote, America's about-face on same-sex marriage happened in the blink of an eye.

The big picture: Just 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage in 1996, the year President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal recognition to same-sex marriages.

That's flipped on its head: 71% now tell Gallup that same-sex and opposite-sex marriages should have the same legal recognition.

[JI7]

1. Gay Rights took decades also .

[tinrobot]

2. Good. It shows how quickly sentiment can shift on important issues.

Let's do gun control next.

[FakeNoose]

3. You're so right about this!

It's never just one generation that makes the difference. It's always a trickle, then a trend, then a landslide.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

4. This sort of calculus largely depends on how you decide to do the math

For example:

It took 144 years for the country to allow women to vote, but it took 239 years to allow same-sex marriages.

Ergo, the former happened much faster.

All I'm saying is ... there's a lot of ways one can do this sort of math.

But assuming the change rate of popular opinion on this particular subject has truly been remarkable historically (I'd wager opinion on Prohibition changed similarly quickly, off the top of my head), I'd venture to say that mass media/communication has played a huge role in why that sort of rapid change is now possible.

[DURHAM D]

5. What about employment discrimination? nt

[NickB79]

6. Gay marriage is something that, once seen in the real world, loses it's fear factor

All of a sudden, you see that gay married couples are just regular people, living their lives, going to work, raising kids, mowing their lawns, etc. It has no impact on straight people at all. Straight marriages didn't suddenly lose all meaning and Catholic priests weren't forced to marry gay couples. None of the fear the far right hyped came to pass.

[dsc]

7. The first case the Supreme Court heard on marriage equality (aka gay marriage)

was in the 1970's. The fact is on many fronts LGBT people are not any better off legally then they were in the 1970's. We have a very shaky hold on employment non discrimination, and no decisions or federal laws for housing or public accomadations. Of the ten largest states, four still have no state wide protections for their LGBT citizens (NC, GA, TX, and FL) and three of those have moved backward on that issue just since 2020. In short, I am not sure I agree that gay rights have come about in the blink of an eye.

[Ms. Toad]

8. As many others have pointed out - the acquisition of rights took far longer than 26 years.

But it is accurate to say that once it started, America's about-face was far quicker than other similar changes. Once there were a few marriage states I predicted it would take about 2-3 years longer than it actually took.

The difference between acceptance of racial minority rights and same gender marriage is that most of us still live in relatively segregated societies - so we don't have family and close friends with whom we are in regular intimate contact to dispel our prejudices. The same is not true for lesbians and gay men - we are everywhere. We live next door (even if you live in segregated communities), we are your parents, your children, your siblings. We work with you. Once marriages started taking place - opening the closet door on more of us - it became much harder to continue to condemn the marriages of people they loved - but all of a sudden knew were gay.