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Originally Posted by pride_of_sterling_city  I might agree that a vote itself is not necessarily important, but you cannot discount the role of social acceptance. The civil rights statutes passed in 1964 (along with some court decisions) established the rights of blacks to equal treatment of the law, but at the time there was not a lot of social acceptance of those decisions. Progress towards black economic parity with whites only started getting serious when a sufficient number of people found racism directed towards blacks socially unacceptable.
Court mandated gay marriage alone won't do it. In Massachusetts, there is apparently a sufficient level of social acceptance to go along with the court decision mandating gay marriage. I doubt that you would find that same result in every state.
An advocate of gay marriage has two choices: courts, which move faster, and legislation, which requires a mandate of some level from public opinion. These two avenues are hard to balance. A court decision rendered too early creates backlash (as we have already seen with the DOMA being enacted to respond to pro-gay marriage state enactments/rulings). On the other hand, the legislative process is slow and time-consuming. | Good luck with social acceptance. What everyone here calls hoophobia is based on the same innate revulsion that you feel for any other sexual orientation. There is nothing innate about any race that you can instantly deem aberrant just because they are "[insert race here]. Whereas when you see two men walking as a couple, that's simply wrong. Even in the Netherlands, same sex couples in romantic situations generate many times more revolting feelings than hetero couples. MinVWS | Acceptance of homosexuality in the Netherlands The fourth and last dimension of attitudes to homosexuality in this study concerns the reaction to the visible presence and expression of homosexuality in the public domain. This dimension rarely receives attention in population surveys; only one survey, held in 2000, asked about one aspect of this: kissing in public. If two men do this, 42% of the Dutch population find this repugnant; if it is two women who are kissing, this raises objections among 31% of respondents. Is there perhaps some confusion here with a general objection to public displays of affection? This explanation does not hold water, because only 8% of the Dutch respondents surveyed reporting having a problem with men and women kissing in public. This is my new signature. |