Who's in favor of same-sex marriage now? Dick Cheney.
Actually this is not so surprising as you might think; like the man says, his daughter is gay and has been in a long-term relationship with her partner for a long time and thanks to that relationship, he has a granddaughter on whom the former Vice-President apparently dotes (as any grandfather should). Of course, he loves not only his granddaughter but his daughter, too, and by extension, her partner. Which goes to show a point I made half a year ago, which is that actually knowing a gay person makes someone more likely to accept gay marriage. I don't claim that point is original to me.
The point is that a guy who has made himself one of the post-Bush Administration exemplars of what it means to be a conservative thinks that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act should be repealed, states allowed to make their own decisions, and appears to favor same-sex marriage rights.
June 1, 2009
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I think that you're generally right that knowing a gay person makes one more likely to support gay marriage, though that can work both ways. I've supported gay marriage since late high school, but that's been despite a lot of the gay people I've known. A lot of the ones I have known have had overbearing personalities and have presented themselves in ways that don't make me particularly inclined to support their movement.
That being said, I think that one of the dynamics at play is that frequently those that are most likely to make their alternate lifestyle known tend to be look-at-me people and pot-stirrers. So I think that if more everyday guys and gals who happen to be homosexual were to come out, I think that it would improve things.
For instance, one of the more refreshing things that happened recently is that I went to a gay wedding. It was a nice little ceremony (with, alas, no legal validation) and the homosexuals that were there fell into the category of the everyday people that I had always figured were out there but that I'd never met.
It's not just a gay thing. I've noticed similar dynamics (those most loud about it are people that are just loud) with pagans, too. To a lesser extent, I think that atheists and Christians have the same dynamic where people are turned off by the public faces of relatively few among their ranks.
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