A thoughtful post ... though it needed the one change marked in orange (I didn't want to use Gary's patented red). As noted in other posts, it is not a gender discrimination issue and when you use that term, you weaken your arguments.

On another note, as an advocate of gay marriage, wouldn't you rather have gay marriage accepted (e.g. where states vote to approve it)? Sometimes we have to rely on the courts to establish a right, but even after a court victory, you still have to win over the majority at some point.

I don't believe that's true.

At the time of the court's decision which eliminated mixed-race marriage bans, there were more people against it than there are now against gays marrying. And I'm not sure you'd get a vote with unqualified support for mixed race marriages if the polls were taken today.

And - no - I don't think that a popularity vote is important.

Agreed. The popularity vote means nothing to me at this point in my life. I simply want the rights and protections other couples get automatically with a marriage contract.

The current "qualifying criteria" Gary and fx wail about is unnecessary, discriminatory, and unconstitutional. There's no valid reason to deny gays and lesbians protections straight couples get automatically with marriage.

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.

very slow - very time consuming - very expensive

I've already given in to the idea that in MY lifetime, I will not have the right to marry. But, I will continue to fight for future generations.

The main reason for this was diversity training in the schools...which the uber-right-wing-religious-wackjobs know all too well. That's why they're so adamantly against having such education in the public schools.

Also - though I believe that there is much to compare gay rights with black rights and the discrimination against both - without question, blacks had/have a MUCH more difficult uphill climb to social acceptance than gays.

I've had a lot of experience with diversity training (and not because I was forced to go) and it has been my experience that participants get pissed off (because diversity training is sooooo p.c.) and that the programs do virtually nothing to promote diversity. I've seen people involved in interracial marriages get p.o.'d over diversity training.

When someone goes to Court and sees a respected black jurist on the bench, that promotes diversity. Even though a lot of blacks do not like Colin Powell, his leadership role in the first Iraq war and subsequent political position promoted diversity. The development of a black middle class also created more acceptance.

I think you are wrong about not seeing gay marriage in your lifetime, especially if more states pass/approve gay marriage. If people start seeing gay marriage working, more and more will become more accepting of it.

Besides, at this point gay marriage advocates have not made the same mistake that black right advocates made. The gay community (I hate that P.C. sounding phrase, but I couldn't think of one better) does not have a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. With those two, its as if the KKK went out and said "let's find some obnoxious race hustler who defends every black criminal so that whites will be mad and be less receptive to black civil rights issues." Generally, there has not been incessant or harping advocacy on the issue. Every day, you read about some race issue, and the incessant barking and whining turns people off. I have not seen that with the gay marriage issue.

They never put interracial marriage up for a vote when they made it illegal in the first place. It's not like the laws came first. There were plenty of interracial marriages before some states made them illegal. In this case, "equality" was explicitly taken away first and then restored with no input from the public. I wonder was there a vote on the decision to import slaves in the first place? Or whether white people wanted to marry outside their race. Because the laws effectively kept white people from marrying any other race, not prevent Black people from marrying white people.

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.