PICAYUNE —
We all know the famous Norman Rockwell painting of a typical American family gathered around Grandma as she serves up a huge turkey. If Rockwell were painting today, his portrait of a Thanksgiving feast would have to include gay Uncle Kevin and perhaps a niece who’s brought her girlfriend home from college. (He might also sketch in the new Chinese daughter-in-law, but that’s another story.)
The American family is changing rapidly, and so are attitudes about same-sex marriage. In the last election, three states voted to approve the institution (Maryland, Maine and Washington), and one, Minnesota, rejected a move to ban it. The focus on Barack Obama’s re-election, and the attention paid to the critical Latino vote, obscured this historic milestone.
For the first time, after more than 30 failed tries, gay marriage was approved by statewide vote. (Until now, it took court decisions or legislative action to enact the laws.) That means same-sex unions are now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia, and advocates are planning a half-dozen more campaigns in the next few years.
In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 51 percent supported marriage equality, up sharply from 32 percent just eight years ago. And the trend line is clear. Among young adults, more than six in 10 favor the right of same-sex couples to wed legally.
“The pace of the change in opinions has picked up over the last few years,” pollster Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center told The New York Times, “and as the younger generation becomes a larger share of the electorate, the writing is on the wall.”
The main motive behind this shift is not ideology but experience. More and more Americans have gay friends and neighbors, classmates and colleagues. And more are sharing their holiday tables with gay relatives. Now add the U.S. Senate, where Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin will become the first openly gay member in January. A new congressman from upstate New York, Sean Patrick Maloney, has three children with his male partner of more than 20 years.
Like many Americans, we see this change in our own lives. We gave a party last summer for our old friend Rep. Barney Frank, who deliberately married his partner, Jim Ready, before he retires from Congress next month. Barney wanted to make sure his fellow lawmakers knew a gay married couple.
Cokie recently visited with four of her closest college friends; two have gay children and one a gay sister. A former student of Steve’s saved for years so he and his partner could afford a surrogate mother, and they are now parenting twin sons. We voted enthusiastically for gay marriage in Maryland, partly because another former student lives in a neighboring suburb with her partner and child, and they yearned for the stability and security of a legal union.
GOP strategists have many post-election worries, but here’s one of the most significant: Six in 10 young voters backed Obama. Yes, they might lose some of their liberal instincts as they start families, buy houses and pay taxes. But it’s also true that once voters cast ballots for the same party several elections in a row, they acquire a certain loyalty to that party. The New Deal coalition that backed FDR held together for more than 30 years; the majority forged by Ronald Reagan won five of seven elections from 1980 through 2004.
Gay marriage is only one issue that helped generate Obama’s strong margins among young voters, but it’s an important part of a larger idea. These voters are more tolerant than their elders on many social matters, from abortion and contraception to marijuana. And they are more likely to reject the domineering moralism emanating from the conservative Christian activists who control Republican policy.
Republicans who actually want to win elections — and not just preach sermons — understand this problem. Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid, says the GOP would be signing a “suicide pact” if it continued to oppose gay marriage.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was right on when he analyzed his party’s defeat in Politico: “If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough, I’m going to go nuts. We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”
So give thanks this holiday season for the new American family, including your gay uncle. And that lovely Chinese daughter-in-law.
(Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.)
Columns
Today’s family not Rockwell’s
- Columns
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- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. - More Columns Headlines
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