Same-Sex Marriage - An Overnight Success

Overnight Success. This label is used to describe someone or something that has a had meteoric rise to fame, fortune, influence or popularity. The tag suggests that the achievements have been unearned somehow, as if luck and timing were the key factors rather than unnoticed hard work and years of unswerving time and attention.

So it seems - at first glance - with the issue of Same-Sex Marriage in America.

The truth is that no minority group in the United States has ever gained their full citizenship rights within a short period of time - not in a year, not in a decade, not in one generation, not in a century. The momentum and pace of acceptance for same-sex marriage in many American states does, however, seem surprising to the casual observer. The reality is that the most recent effort for equal marital rights is only the most recent leg of a much longer journey. This struggle has included issues of personal acknowledgement and family/social acceptance, as well as overcoming professional discrimination, cultural bias and lack of national political will (as recently as 1996 the Defense of Marriage Act was approved by 85% of Congress). Therefore, the evolution of this Movement - in this country at least - has not been rapid, but a solid century in the making, maybe longer.

Still, why does Same-Sex Marriage seem to have shifted into a higher gear judicially, legislatively and constitutionally than it seemed to be in just a few short years ago? I have a few thoughts:

1. Film & Television - Cinema in all its forms has come a long way in presenting a balanced, sympathetic portrayal of Gay Americans in the last 20 years. Successful movies like Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, Boys Don't Cry and The Kids Are Alright have portrayed typical people acting with compassion and dignity amid happiness, horror and heartbreak. Just like us. Likewise, TV portrayals today are light-years from the stereotypes seen in shows like Soap and Three's Company (where the lead character was only pretending to be gay). HBO's Six Feet Under and ABC's very popular Modern Family have given us likeable characters who just happen to be homosexual. And with the disappearance of Oprah Winfrey from daytime TV two years ago, Ellen DeGeneres is undeniably the most popular personality on the air between 8am and Primetime.

2. Religion - Poll after poll in recent years has indicated that religious affiliation and church attendance have been on the decline nationwide for some time. Ironically, at the same time acceptance of different sexual orientations has been on the increase. I don't think this is a coincidence. A connection between the two seems logical, as Conservative Christianity has been the organization leading the charge against all things gay since Jesus was in diapers. This observation is not a condemnation of Christianity as a whole. Far from it. Jesus' lessons of kindness, forgiveness, non-judgmentalism and tolerance are still universal themes. Instead, I am referring to exclusionary Christianity, which judges and condemns, or worse, watches quietly from the sidelines. Just ask the Southern white clergy of the Civil Rights Era, too busy sitting on their hands to praise or encourage Martin Luther King and his disciples, whose non-violent protest methods came straight from the Sermon on the Mount. Seems they didn't know a prophet when they saw one. Tolerance, it seems, is highly conditional.

3. Grass Roots Political Efforts - Taking a page from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Dr. King, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, countless Suffragettes, hundreds of Freedom Riders and thousands of other anonymous Americans who have scratched and clawed for their full civil rights - Gay Rights Activists have relentlessly forced straight America to confront its personal discomfort with homosexuality generally, and its institutional discrimination specifically. The desire to have their relationships recognized legally is merely the latest expression of rights hard-earned.

4. Young People - Homosexuality, much less same-sex marriage was on the fringe of American consciousness when I was a kid. We didn't talk about it because it never crossed our minds. Outwardly at least, we didn't know anyone who was gay. At best homosexuality was a punchline, at its worse it was a reason for ostracization or violence. But now people in their teens, 20's, 30's have always had this topic as part of the backbeat of a larger national conversation. More and more people know someone who is gay, have a family member who is gay, work with someone who is gay, or are friends with someone who is gay. That trend will not suddenly reverse direction. And many people just don't care if someone's orientation is different from their own. They have logically deduced that it has no direct or indirect affect on their own lives. The result? Millions of heterosexual Americans have slowly and steadily discovered that gay people are different from themselves in only one way. Everything else - their hopes, dreams, fears and problems - looks just the same.

The truth is that homosexuality, much less same-sex marriage, will never be okay with some segments of the American population. Hell, some of those same Americans don't accept the outcome of the Civil War, the fact that our President is an African-American or that this country was built by more than just white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. And if not, so what? It's not a club you join. I'm not a fan of drunks but I know they aren't contagious. Regardless, I don't have any desire to quarantine them on an island somewhere. I still wish the Dodgers played in Brooklyn but I accept that their home has been in Los Angeles for more than 50 years. So it will be with Gay Rights by the mid-21st century. Eventually another footnote in our shared history. For now though, more and more people have accepted that the dam has burst open and there is no patching a levee that will seems more and more antiquated as one day follows the next.

We can be a very close-minded people - even in the modern era (just ask any Muslim living here since 9/11). We are still quick to stereotype and brand an entire group as being all one thing or another. But in fits and starts (voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, rights of the disabled) we continue to grant legal equality to more and more previously disenfranchised people. There doesn't seem to be any question that a newer, higher level of tolerance and acceptance has entered the public's consciousness and conscience.

And that - in my opinion - is a good thing.