Gay marriage

Gay marriage is an issue in which society is changing quickly and dramatically in front of our eyes... and for that reason, i find it fascinating. I'm 26 years old, and when i was a freshman in high school, the concept of gay marriage hadn't even been born. When Vermont passed a civil unions law, it created a backlash and controversy. When Massachusetts became the first state to have gay marriage 5 years ago, it was considered radical. Nowadays gay marriage is a hot topic, and it's 5 states and counting (with Rhode Island and Cow Hampshire soon to follow).

Anyway, here's an article i found that sums up how i feel about the inevitability of gay marriage (at least in blue states).

Gay Marriage: Only a Matter of Time -- Politics Daily

"This was a good week for social and religious conservatives and a bad week for proponents of same-sex marriage. At least that's how it seemed. But success, in this case, was an illusion. Rather, I should say that the conservatives' apparent victories were only temporary. Why do I say that? Because when it comes to the question of gay marriage, the future is not on the conservatives' side. The ultimate resolution of this issue is a matter of simple math: Young Americans favor gay marriage, old Americans don't. The poll numbers on this question are immutable, as unyielding as the aging process itself.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger summed it up nicely -- and succinctly -- this week: "One day," said the Governator, "either the people or courts will recognize gay marriage."
I'm pretty sure it's going to be both. The "Millennial" generation will see to that. All anyone need know about the long-term prospects of gay marriage -- and of the likely fate of a political party that opposes it -- is that evangelical Christians under the age of 25 are more tolerant of gay marriage than New Deal Democrats over the age of 65.
Having said that, change is never easy, and sometimes society takes two steps back from the abyss of progress for every step forward.
This week, for example, the state Supreme Court in usually liberal California upheld the constitutionality of a 2008 ballot referendum in which voters banned gay marriage in the Golden State. This event was followed less than 24 hours later by the release of a new Gallup Poll showing that support for gay marriage remains a minority position in this country -- and that it is not increasing.
"Americans' views on same-sex marriage have essentially stayed the same in the past year, with a majority of 57 percent opposed to granting such marriages legal status and 40 percent in favor of doing so," Gallup managing editor Jeffrey M. Jones stated in his famously neutral prose. "Though support for legal same-sex marriage is significantly higher now than when Gallup first asked about it in 1996, in recent years support has appeared to stall, peaking at 46 percent in 2007."
Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative California-based organization opposed to gay marriage, was understandably less restrained. He termed the state high court's ruling "a victory for democracy and a victory for the civil rights of clergy, county clerks and Californians across the political spectrum who did not want to be forced by the government to approve of same-sex marriage."
I certainly understand why traditionalists believe that this issue is being shoved down their throats by activist judges, pandering Democratic politicians, and the usual assortment of media elites and Hollywood liberals.
We've gone in five short years from a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that, seemingly out of the blue, directed the state Legislature to codify gay marriage as a basic human right to watching, perplexed, as some poor beauty contestant from California is pilloried by a contest judge for not ad-libbing an endorsement of gay marriage on the spot.
This kind of thing is a lot for people of a certain age to absorb. And Carrie Prejean is hardly the only American who has dug in her heels. So did Saddleback Church super-pastor Rick Warren, along with a majority of voters in laid-back California. Most politicians are not (yet) on the bandwagon, either. The holdouts, all serious presidential candidates, include Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama.
"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman," all of these politicians have repeated, robotically, as if this was actually an answer. (Not to be metaphysical or anything, but it couldn't be the answer for the simple reason that it was ... the question.)
One thing became clear in the 2008 campaign, however: The young voters who flocked to Obama in unprecedented droves did so in spite of his stated opposition to gay marriage, not because of it. And the tepidness of that opposition only added to his appeal. In other words, his young supporters did not really believe him; they figure he was with them, but couldn't say so for reasons of expediency.
Don't take it from me. In a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in May, 59 percent of respondents aged 18-29 said "yes" to the question: "Should same-sex marriages be recognized by the law as valid?" Only 37 percent in that young age group answered "no."
By contrast, the oldest group of respondents, those 65 and older, overwhelmingly said same-sex marriages should not be recognized as valid. Sixty-six percent in that age group were opposed to the idea, while 32 percent said same-sex marriages should be valid.
These numbers have not changed appreciably in the last couple of years. As far as I know, it's the largest demographic gap -- if age is the relevant demographic -- on an issue of public policy I've ever seen.
While examining the poll numbers on support for gay marriage among evangelical Christians last year, I asked Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, whether my summation about evangelical Christians under 25 and New Deal Democrats over 65 was correct. Andy is a numbers guy, and he's careful, so he thought a moment before telling me, "The survey question has never been asked exactly that way, but I think you can write that. The data would support it."
This conversation was etched in my mind because I'd spent a semester teaching in Boston in 2007, and though I found conservatives as well as liberals among the college students there -- well, yes, many more liberals -- and Democrats and Republicans and Christians, Jews, and non-believers, I had a helluva time finding any young people who had any problem with gay marriage.
In 2004, when this issue insinuated itself into the presidential campaign, I got a call one day from an old friend, Fred Barnes, who asked me to have lunch with him in the restaurant at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington. I first knew Fred when he was the White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, a job I later took myself. This was before Fred was a conservative commentator, before Christianity became the driving force in his life. I liked him then, and I like him now. On that day, I was assuming he was going to offer me a job at The Weekly Standard, and was wondering how he'd react when I told him that, although I always treat Republicans respectfully in print, I'm neither a conservative nor a Republican.
Fred did indeed ask me a point-blank question, but it had nothing to do with employment. "Carl," he said. "What do you think of gay marriage?"
I paused for a moment. In the end I told him it doesn't matter what I think of this issue -- and it didn't matter what he thought of it, either.
"It doesn't matter, because it's coming." I said. "Our kids' generation will see to that. The only choice you or anybody else has is whether, while this issue is being hashed out, you talk and behave in a way that will make you proud when all the dust has settled."
I still believe that. I also believe that the grace with which most conservatives have expressed themselves on this issue, even while registering dissent, reveals that deep down they know it, too."