Is nationwide gay marriage inevitable?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I remember people arguing otherwise a couple years, like Philip though he was a quasi-troll then. Old Philip said that no state would have gay marriage in 2060. I wonder what will be said now.

57% of Americans under 40 support gay marriage.
31% of Americans over 40 support gay marriage.

It's obvious.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

No (realist)

[Frodo]

Probably -though I would hope that the Supreme Court doesn't seek to impose itself with another Roe vs. Wade-like decision, and let the states decide for themselves.  It will be a longer but more democratic process. 

[Jacobtm]

The problem is that support for gay marriage is still very uneven. While states like NY have seen support for gay marriage grow by 15 percentage points, places like Texas have only had about a 5% growth in support recently. This could lead to a situation where the majority of Americans support gay marriage, but majorities in many conservative states still oppose it. I suppose at that point gay marriage might gain some federal recognition, but it would probably be quite a long time before each state individually recognized gay marriage.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/gay-marriage-state-by-state-tipping.html

[Brittain33]

Probably -though I would hope that the Supreme Court doesn't seek to impose itself with another Roe vs. Wade-like decision, and let the states decide for themselves.  It will be a longer but more democratic process. 

When Roe v. Wade was decided, there were fewer states with legal abortion than which currently have legal same-sex marriage.

Introducing nationwide same-sex marriage via a court case now, when there are only 6 states that have it, would be counterproductive. It's not going to happen anyway because there are no court cases in the pipeline. But what about in the future, when half of Americans live in states with same-sex marriage? What if we reach a point where 30 states have it, but Utah, Alabama, and Mississippi will never do it--similar to where we were with sodomy laws just before Lawrence v. Texas? At that point, you will have a seriously untenable situation with marriage and divorce laws out of whack for a large number of people--far more than would ever be affected by current disparities in consanguinity laws, for example.

[7,052,770]

Eventually the Supreme Court will rule that a license in any state is valid in every state (full faith and credit), and there won't be much point opposing.  It may be 30 years before Mississippi, Alabama, Utah, etc., actually grant licenses themselves, but it will be a moot point long before then.

[Earth]

I would hope so.

[Countess Anya of the North Parish]

You make it sound like a bad thing.
But i think it will be nation wide. I think it is cause people put pressure on those who are against it.

[opebo]

To be honest I still find it more likely gays will be rounded up by the majority than that they'll get the right to marry.  I'm a pessimist, and I know people love to hate.

[RI]

Well, probably, but not for a long time on a state-by-state basis.

[Iosif]

Yes. All civilisations progress to the left. America's just a little retarded.

It'll get there.

[CJK]

Depends whether people finally wake up to the fact that 2+2=4 and not 5 when we want it too.

[Rowan]

Maybe by 2100.

[pogo stick]

HAHA. no

[War on Want]

Depends whether people finally wake up to the fact that 2+2=4 and not 5 when we want it too.

How does that have anything to do with gay marriage?

[Holmes]

Depends whether people finally wake up to the fact that 2+2=4 and not 5 when we want it too.

If I marry my boyfriend, I'll fail my intro to calculus course next year!?

[Mechaman]

Due to the unpredictability of the American political landscape, I voted yes.

Do you think people in 1857 after the Dred Scott Case thought slavery would be done away with within a decade?

Do you think people in 1957 after federal troops had to escort the Little Rock Nine into Little Rock Central High School thought just ten years later in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia the right for two people to marry, no matter what their race, would be upheld?

Keep events like these in mind.

[John Dibble]

Yes, but all of us here may be dead by the time that happens.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Yes. All civilisations progress to the left. America's just a little retarded.

It'll get there.

[© tweed]

it either is inevitable or it can't happen, yet history provides us with context clues we can use to project what it is that has been determined.  I therefore voted 'yes'

[exopolitician]

I doubt it.

[ilikeverin]

Those numbers will change over time, but the overall trajectory will still be towards the left, so, yes.

[MK]

No.  Things change and peoples minds change.

I wouldn't shock me to see a shift torwards the traditional marriage in the next 15 years making gay rights and marriage a underground issue once again.

Sure this was being said/asked in the 1970s.

[Brittain33]

No.  Things change and peoples minds change.

I wouldn't shock me to see a shift torwards the traditional marriage in the next 15 years making gay rights and marriage a underground issue once again.

How? What is going to cause that to happen? What is going to make young people change their minds, and even younger people decide to rebel against equality for gays? Opposition to gay marriage is the default position in this society, and everyone who disagrees has had to overcome that one way or the other. It never moves in the other direction for individuals.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Not sure what you mean by this, but very few people even dreamed of gay marriage prior to the early 1990s. It was the court case in Hawaii that first brought it some limited national attention.

There were occasional stunts in the 1970s, I think, that had less historical significance than Victoria Woodhull's presidential campaign did for Hillary Clinton.

[Storebought]

Due to the unpredictability of the American political landscape, I voted yes.

Do you think people in 1857 after the Dred Scott Case thought slavery would be done away with within a decade?

Do you think people in 1957 after federal troops had to escort the Little Rock Nine into Little Rock Central High School thought just ten years later in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia the right for two people to marry, no matter what their race, would be upheld?

Keep events like these in mind.

Your examples demonstrate the unpredictability of the US court system.