Gay unions accelerate history

History is a wily dealer.

When it slapped down the same-sex marriage issue in San Francisco three weeks ago, it handed a wild card not only to President Bush and Sen. John Kerry but also to the mainstream American news media.

The question for the Republican incumbent, his presumptive Democratic challenger and the media is this: Is the country witnessing the birth of a broad new civil rights movement or a countercultural insurgency? Is this, in other words, one of those tectonic social shifts that alters America’s entire moral landscape or just another skirmish in its desultory but endless culture war?

Much that matters flows from the answer.

When recently elected San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began handing out marriage licenses to same-sex couples last month, it was easy to dismiss the whole thing as another outbreak example of Bay Area eccentricity. But that view ignored two factors.

One was the fact that -- as singular as it may be--there is no city in America that speaks the language of rights as fluently as San Francisco. This is a place, moreover, where even menu writers feel compelled to comment on the morality of your entree’s ingredients. And, in the city’s young mayor, the movement found an attractively telegenic and eloquent spokesman. Newsom argues that all he is trying to do is allow people “to live a happy life.” He also specifically compares prohibitions against same-sex unions to those that once forbade interracial marriage.

Then, within days, the movement for same-sex marriage spread. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daly endorsed it. Officials in New Mexico; New Paltz, N.Y.; and Portland, Ore. began issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, while insisting that San Francisco is breaking state law, told Jay Leno -- who else? -- that he has no intrinsic objections to such unions, if voters change the statute.

“Even gay activists are surprised at how fast this has taken off,” said CNN political analyst William Schneider. “I remember saying not long ago that Howard Dean couldn’t be president because he’d signed a law creating civil unions in Vermont. Now, that’s the moderate position.”

Meanwhile, the two presidential candidates gingerly have staked out positions their handlers calculate will offend as few of their likely supporters as possible. Bush has glancingly endorsed a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. Kerry backs civil unions but opposes both same-sex marriage and constitutional change to proscribe it. Neither seems concerned with the ironies: a GOP president, head of the party of limited government, advocating an unprecedented federal preemption of local authority, and a Democratic candidate whose defense of states’ rights is unparalleled since Reconstruction.

Meanwhile, the national media struggle to discern what’s going on and how much attention to give it. Many newspapers and local television stations have debated the issue of how frequently and prominently to present images in which same-sex couples display post-nuptial affection. How much space and attention should go to opponents of same-sex marriage? Many media organizations have taken editorial positions that echo the so-called reasonable voices of the early civil rights movement and its assault on Jim Crow. Yes, there’s a moral point here, but this takes things too far, too fast.

In fact, the climate surrounding same-sex marriage resembles that of the civil rights movement in another interesting way: the demographic distribution of public opinion. According to CNN’s Schneider, a leading scholar of public opinion, “support for same-sex marriage is almost a perfect function of age. The only place in American society where you currently find majority support for same-sex marriage is among people under 30. Among people over 60, don’t even ask. That’s why every year, opposition to these unions goes down a percentage point or so. Also, as was the case with civil rights in the 1960s, support for same-sex marriage is strongest among young people who have been to college. The difference is that, now, that’s the majority in that group.”

For these Americans under 30, according to Schneider, this is a pure civil rights movement. In 1962, when I was an undergraduate at Brandeis, people we admired went south to take part in the freedom rides, but even if you weren’t an activist, there was outrage over the denial of civil rights to black Americans. Last October, I went to a debate in Boston and was stunned by the many questions about gay rights, expressing the same sentiment I recall from my own college years: How can we let this happen in America?

What about Americans between 30 and 60 years: Where are they on this issue? According to the opinion surveys, they are opposed to gay and lesbian marriages but in favor of civil unions. As Schneider reads it, “there’s a vast middle that wants to express tolerance for gays and lesbians but not approval.”

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Another parallel

Something similar was true during the height of the civil rights movement, when non-Southern majorities supported equal rights but not civil disobedience to achieve them: the Schwarzenegger position.

Interestingly enough, there appear to be reservoirs of support for same-sex marriage rights among two groups that have waged their own struggles for equal rights within recent memories. In Georgia, for example, African American members of the state Legislature are blocking an anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the state constitution because they’re uncomfortable endorsing any form of discrimination. Similarly, women, who have waged civil rights battles twice in the last 100 years -- first for suffrage and then for equal economic and educational opportunities -- are more likely than men in their age groups to support equality for gays and lesbians.

However, as a Los Angeles Times poll found 20 years ago and a CNN survey recently confirmed, the most critical variable in Americans’ attitudes toward these issues is whether they know a gay person. According to Schneider, who advised both surveys, “Knowing somebody who is openly gay -- a nephew, cousin or co-worker --makes a huge difference, even among conservatives.”

One area where things are less clear has to do with whether Americans would accept judicial leadership on this issue as they did on civil rights. Without the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, it’s possible the country still would be dealing with segregation and the concept of separate but equal. In that instance, the court’s ruling was the sword that cut the Gordian knot.

“Civil rights is evidence of how the courts can force change,” said Schneider, “and abortion is an example of how they cannot. Public opinion accommodated itself to the court’s ruling in Brown. In 1973, when the court decided Roe vs. Wade, public opinion did not shift. In fact, it has become more divided in the years since. That’s because people’s views on abortion are deeply grounded in religion. Abortion remains a highly contentious issue because it involves a big conflict between the theory of rights and religious conviction. The same may be true for same-sex marriage.”

If it is, the press may have as much trouble handling this issue as it traditionally has had with the debate over abortion -- and for the same reason. “On the national level,” said Schneider, “the press is one of the most secular institutions in American society. It just doesn’t get religion or any idea that flows from religious conviction. The press is not necessarily contemptuous of serious religion. It’s just uncomprehending.”