The New Normal: ‘Gay Marriage'

My 10-year-old daughter recently announced to me that the first thing she'll do as presidentis make gay marriage the law of the land.

Before school ended, she had coined the term "gaycism" ("It's racism toward gay people," she explained to her classmates). She's pretty diverse in her activism, as she also organized a petition drive against classroom teachers teaching gym (her least favorite subject) as a cost-cutting measure.

But I had to gently explain to my daughter that by the time 2044 or 2048 rolls around, gay marriage will be legal everywhere.

She's not a selfish kid, so she wasn't bothered that her administration might lack this milestone, just as she wasn't upset that she probably wouldn't be the first female president. But she did want to know why.

"Because no one will care in 20 years," I told her. "No one will understand why it wasn't legal before."

That's the way social progress works. Eventually, hard-fought rights seem as natural and inevitable as 85-degree days in August. 

And being able to marry the person you love just makes sense to more and more people. It's about basic fairness.

Gay marriage is currently legal in 13 states, thanks, in part, to some big electoral victories in 2012 and the U.S. Supreme Court dumping part of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). 

By 2016, Michigan is likely to join the list, with organization well underway for a constitutional amendment reversing our 2004 gay marriage ban.

A clear plurality of voters back the idea in recent EPIC-MRA and Glengariff Group polls. In 2004, only 24 percent of Michigan voters supported gay marriage. Now 57 percent do in Glengariff's May survey. Pollster Richard Czuba tells me he's never seen such a dramatic turnaround on an issue in such a short time. 

Even Maggie Gallagher, perhaps the best known crusader against gay marriage, appears demoralized about the fight. She's now arguing those opposing gay marriage could face their own discrimination -- a clear sign the tide is turning.

You know there's no turning back when Fox News is blasted for making "way for pro-homosexual advocate Megyn Kelly," who's reportedly taking over Sean Hannity's slot, as "another sign of the channel's left-ward drift and decline."

That's from a new, 92-page report by the conservative group American Survival Inc, written by the president of another outfit, Americans for Truth about Homosexuality. Kelly's sin is apparently asking how gay marriage bans differ from laws that used to bar interracial marriage. 

Now Fox News still features plenty of people against gay rights, like Ann Coulter. But perhaps the network is making a sound financial play with Kelly, given the fact that gays are a high-end advertising demo.

In the not-too-distant future, we'll look back at people railing against gays (often on Fox News) as embarrassing reminders of prejudice we'd all like to forget. And my daughter's generation will be the last one to remember a time when that was socially acceptable.

Susan J. Demas is a political analyst and an award-winning journalist. She can be reached at sjdemas@gmail.com.