Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, writing in the Sunday NY Times Week in Review:
As more same-sex couples are married in religious or civil ceremonies, sentences like "Jane and June have been married for 15 years" are bound to become part of the linguistic wallpaper of the media in the same way "gay couple" has. "
At that point, we can talk about a genuine change in semantics -- though there certainly won't be anything "mere" about it. And sooner or later, the legal forms will inevitably follow suit.
There will certainly be painful legal and legislative setbacks ahead, but the gay euphoria that's been uncorked won't be so easy to rebottle.
Taking a Stand.
If you haven't yet read Dale Carpenter's newly posted column, it's worth taking a gander. Dale argues that pressure must be brought on both gay Democratic and Republican activists to make it clear to their party's candidates and office holders that a vote to ban gay marriages (and nullify those that have taken place) will mean no future support, ever again, no matter how "good" the politician is on other issues.
On the presidential level, the Log Cabin Republicans have given indications that if Bush formally endorses the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, they won't back his re-election. Kerry is more problematic; if he supports amending state constitutions to ban gay marriages, and keeps fairly mum on the federal amendment (while having his gay liaison tell gay activists what they want to hear), what will liberal groups like the Human Rights Campaign do?
[Update: yes, of course, couldn't you guess - I wrote last night that it might be significant that Bush hadn't yet endorsed the FMA, and so a few hours later, he does. More later...]
Meanwhile, it's now been a few weeks since the Bush
administration started leaking that the president would formally
endorse the Federal Marriage Amendment, yet to the chagrin of the
religious right he has, to date, failed to do so. He may make a
formal announcement, perhaps imminently, but the delay has already
caused consternation within the hard right, whose leaders were
assured by Karl Rove (they say) that the president would both
support and fight for the amendment. So what's going on? Could
there be countering voices in the administration urging against the
Rove strategy (Cheney? Laura?). One day, perhaps, we'll
know.