Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Has The Avalanche Started?

Image credit: Nova (PBS)

Not long after PZ Myers wrote this:

Could it be the start of an avalanche? The Vermont legislature has overridden a governor's veto to sign into a law a bill recognizing gay marriage.

Vermont Becomes Fourth State To Legalize Gay Marriage

I received an e-mail about this:

The D.C. Council has voted to recognize gay marriages performed in other states on the same day that Vermont became the fourth state to legalize same-sex unions.

DC Council Votes to Recognize Other States' Gay Marriages

The Washington Post article goes on to say that the vote was 12-0 on the first ballot.

While I don't see an avalanche, one thing is clear - gay marriage is an acceptable idea in much of America. It's been deemed acceptable by an overwhelming majority of politicians in two places. It won't happen in many places for quite a while, but barring some major change in our national consciousness, it will happen.

UPDATE: Teddy Partridge discusses the Obama Administration's reaction at FireDogLake.


2 comments:

Dana Hunter said...

Every time I see this news, and the hysterical reaction from the frothing fundies and ridiculous right, I hear an old REM song in my head:

"It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine..."

Heh.

Cujo359 said...

Making predictions about just about anything more than a few years in the future is difficult to do accurately. Nevertheless, I think that as long as we remain the highly mobile culture we are now bigotry against people of different ethnic groups and gender preferences will continue to decline. That's certainly been true for the last three generations, and I'd bet it will be true for at least the next.

So, yes, I think on this issue bigots are seeing the end of the world as they know it. If it returns, it will be long after they're gone.