Anti-gay bigots won’t give up: Why marriage equality triumphalism is a big mistake

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http://www.salon.com/2014/03/29/anti_gay_bigots_wont_give_up_why_marriage_equality_triumphalism_is_a_big_mistake/



It’s fast becoming conventional wisdom: The culture war skirmish over same-sex marriage (SSM) is over, with the pro-SSM side having decisively won. Ever since people started noticing that folks in my generation were overwhelmingly supportive of same-sex couples having the right to wed, this line of analysis has been on the rise. But with the Supreme Court’s laudable decision last year to gut the Defense of Marriage Act, what was once just one common viewpoint among many others has now become the conclusion that anyone who knows anything must inevitably reach. The gay rights movement has won; all that’s left is to work out the details for the celebratory parade.

Like much conventional wisdom, there’s something to this. No one can doubt the sea change American culture is experiencing when it comes to LBGTQ people. But as is also often the case with conventional wisdom, this gay rights triumphalism is too simplistic, too pat. To put it simply, the gay rights movement is indeed winning — but it’s too soon to declare Mission Accomplished just yet.

Here’s an example of what I mean when I gripe about triumphalism: In a perplexingly wrongheaded article for the Atlantic this week, reporter Molly Ball tried to argue that, as the piece’s title puts it, “Republicans Are Driving the Momentum for Gay Marriage.” While I couldn’t begin to tell you what it means to “drive” the “momentum” of something, I can with great confidence report that Ball’s evidence is meager and at times even self-contradictory. To make her case, she places a great emphasis on the fact that some of the federal judges who have struck down state-level SSM bans recently are appointees of Republican presidents. She also points to a handful of Republican politicians — mostly governors in purple states — that have decided to stop working so hard against SSM, opting instead to take the Scott Brown route and say, in essence, “whatever.”

In response to Ball’s conceit, we should establish a few things right off the bat. For one thing, there’s no federal right to marriage for same-sex couples; the Supreme Court walked up to the very edge of that line in its DOMA ruling before deciding to punt. For another, while SSM is legal in 17 states, there are 50 states, total, within the U.S. That means that in 33 states, SSM is still illegal. (For those of you who, like me, are mathematically challenged, that’s nearly double the number of those that have legalized the practice.) The population of those 33 states is just a bit shy of two-thirds of the overall U.S. population, which is around 318 million, which means that hundreds of millions of people still live in places where the right to marry someone they love is dependent upon whether or not they were born of different genders.

[MNBrewer]

1. Molly Ball's article is an outlier and is not at all reflective of the reality of the situation

however, "concern" about triumphalism is duly noted.