WHY GAY MARRIAGE AND NOT OTHER ISSUES? A FEW THOUGHTS

Wonkblog's Sarah Kliff asks:

States are cracking down on abortion—and legalizing gay marriage. What gives?

Tuesday marked for a watershed day for gay rights activists as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a case with the potential to legalize same-sex marriage across the country.

Across the country and 1,500 miles west of Washington, an equally notable event took place: North Dakota enacted the country's most restrictive abortion law, barring all procedures after six weeks.

For decades, support (or opposition) for gay marriage and abortion went hand in hand. They were the line-in-the-sand "values" issues that sharply divided the political parties.

Not anymore....

Kliff says it's because young people are much more supportive of gay marriage than older people, while there's been no similar generational shift on abortion. But why is that?

One reason, I think, is that LGBT people have fought relentlessly for respect and rights, especially since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. They've shouted and implored and appealed to the rest of the public's better nature. And they've maintained a sense of group identity -- they're very politically active on multiple fronts as an interest group. This really isn't happening anymore regarding abortion rights -- in large part because many people don't see any threat to legal abortion (often because, where they live, there is no real threat), there isn't an impassioned, organized societal bloc fighting to keep reproductive rights alive.

Elsewhere at The Washington Post, Matt Miller makes a similar point about gay rights:

Did you hear that Dick Cheney came out for universal health-care coverage after his uninsured daughter went bankrupt because she fell expensively ill?

Or that Sen. Rob Portman just proposed a big new program to guarantee great teachers for every child after finding out that his son had awful, untrained professors at Yale?

...Why is this issue different from all other progressive issues? Why has this one moved so quickly?

There are surely plenty of reasons, but the one that gets little attention is class.

It’s obvious but still bears underlining: When every economic and social class shares in the experience of injustice or intolerable wrongs, things change faster. If only poor people were gay, does anyone think our political leaders would have "evolved" at this pace? Likewise, if we had a draft, does anyone think our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would have proceeded as they did?

... I never thought most Americans would support gay marriage before they supported, say, basic health insurance for every citizen. Or excellent teachers for every child. Or some minimally decent reward for full-time work....


Boy, was I wrong....

But gun violence has claimed upscale, prominent victims as well as poor and middle-class victims, and somehow there isn't unstoppable momentum toward gun control. On the other hand, Hispanics in America are, on average, less well off than whites, yet politicians are expressing great concern about issues deemed to matter to Hispanics.

Again, I think that when people regard themselves as an interest group, and make it known in the political arena that you ignore their group concerns at your peril, things change. On guns, gun-control proponents don't fight relentlessly as a bloc -- whereas pro-gunners absolutely do, which is why they win nearly all the time. Poor and working-class people don't vote and agitate as a bloc -- certainly not across racial lines. And so they're ignored.

I think members of a group need to be politicized, and not easily mollified. If politicians feared that women (or fertile womwen, or fertile heterosexuals of both genders) were highly attuned across the country to the reproductive-rights threat, they might fear punishment at the polls if they pushed for draconian abortion laws. If poor and middle-class voters routinely voted their class interests, politicians would fear crossing them.

Gay people (and their families and friends) have made it clear that they're politically engaged on gay issues. And that makes a big difference.