Kerry Eleveld is one of the better journalist and commentators in the business. She has made a powerful argument on Salon.com that the upcoming decisions from the Supreme Court will not cause a backlash similar to Roe v.Wade. Here is what she writes:
In
the cascade of comparisons made recently between abortion and same-sex
marriage — and the specter of a political backlash arising from a
Supreme Court ruling advancing gay marriage — one glaring distinction
between the two issues has been largely overlooked by prognosticators:
the power of coming out.
Sixty
percent of Americans now say they have a close friend or family member
who is gay, an 11 percent jump from 2010. In the 1990s, most Americans
said exactly the opposite.
Essentially,
a progressive societal shift has taken place — what was once considered
taboo has now become polite dinner table conversation in a good number
of American households. And while civil rights advancements almost
always provoke some societal tension, this trend toward a humanization
of the subject may largely insulate the LGBT equality movement from the
setbacks that have sometimes befallen the reproductive rights movement.
