A Quiet (and Sometimes Not) Marriage Revolution is Going on in DC
There is a lot of evolving going on in the US these days and no, the dolphins at SeaWorld have not suddenly sprouted opposable thumbs. The evolution is instead taking place in the minds of members of Congress, with long-held beliefs about same-sex marriage being jettisoned quicker than you can say “the polls are moving in one direction and there are less than two years until the midterms elections”.
Politicians of both stripes are suddenly, er, coming out for marriage equality – and in many cases evolution has had a significant role to play. Vice-President Joe Biden started the ball rolling last year when he declared his support for same-sex marriage rights; he was followed by President Barack Obama, who said his view had “evolved”.
Since then a trickle has become a torrent: Rob Portman, a Republican senator from Ohio senior enough to be vetted as Mitt Romney’s running mate, last month became the most prominent member of his party to drop his opposition. His change of heart was triggered by his son revealing that he was gay. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, said her views on same-sex marriage were also “evolving”, adding: “It’s important to acknowledge that there is a change afoot in this country in terms of how marriage is viewed.”
Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, took the same route. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, chimed in, saying his beliefs had also “evolved”, while Mark Kirk last week became another Republican to switch: rather than citing an “evolving” view he put his change of heart down to a near-death experience after he suffered a stroke.
Even the biggest beast of cable television news has jumped on the bandwagon. The pugnacious Bill O’Reilly, a Fox News host never afraid of high-volume verbal jousting, said same-sex marriage proponents had a “compelling argument”. Opponents, he added, needed to do more than “thump the Bible” – a change from his previous position.
What is going on? The Supreme Court hearings on the challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s ban on same-sex marriage suggest barriers to legalisation will fall eventually. Growing public support for same-sex marriage is another factor: the latest poll by the Pew Research Center shows 49 per cent of Americans approve of same-sex marriage, with 44 per cent disapproving.
This number is significant, not just because it shows that the swing in support for same-sex marriage has been swift, but because – as Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show this week – more Americans have an “evolved” view on same-sex marriage than actually believe in evolution. Forty-six per cent of them think the human race was created in a single day within the past 10,000 years, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. It is unclear how many of them will eventually evolve this view.
Kim’s bad guys
The recent sabre-rattling by North Korea and its 30-year-old leader Kim Jong-eun has caused anxiety around the world. Threats of nuclear war, missile launchers moved to new locations and other provocations have gone unexplained, leaving analysts to search for motives.
But anyone puzzled by Mr Kim’s actions clearly has not been paying attention at their local multiplex. North Koreans have become the bad guys of choice in action movies, winning roles normally reserved for Islamist terrorists, English thesps with plummy accents and rogue Chinese agents. Life, in Mr Kim’s case, is merely imitating art.
In Olympus Has Fallen, a recent caper starring Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart, a group of North Koreans leads a successful invasion of the White House. In last year’s Red Dawn – itself a remake of the 1980s flick in which the Russian army improbably invades a Colorado high school – the bad guys were supposed to be Chinese. But at a late stage in production the decision was made to switch the identity of the baddies to North Koreans.
With China now the world’s second-largest cinema market and censors there able to block the release of US films, any depictions that could be construed as remotely negative are being written out of scripts. This has cleared the way for North Korea to become the western world’s cinematic enemy of choice, a mantle it will relinquish this summer on the release of the latest J.J. Abrams Star Trek film. Its villain? The very posh – and very English – Benedict Cumberbatch.
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