Still Is An Issue

Gay marriage a dead issue

By Dick Polman

Eight years is an aeon in politics. Witness the waning potency of the gay-marriage issue.

During the 2004 campaign, Republican strategists put gay marriage on referendum ballots in key swing states as a "wedge" issue to unnerve Democrats and gin up the conservative base for President George W. Bush. The Massachusetts high court had just ruled for legalization, and hostility toward the concept was the centrist position in America.

This is no longer true.

Granted, social conservatives voiced anger Tuesday when, for the first time ever, a federal court of appeals declared that gay marriage was a constitutional expression of equal rights. But most Americans will shrug and move on. As evidenced by all the polls, tolerance is the new centrism.

Case in point is the subplot that stars Vaughn Walker.

As a federal District Court judge in California, he wrote the original ruling in favor of gay marriage, back in August 2010. When he retired seven months later, he confirmed long-standing rumors that he was gay. Conservative litigants pounced on the news and insisted his ruling be shelved on the grounds that he had concealed an inherent conflict of interest, namely, that he was "an active practitioner of the homosexual lifestyle."

On appeal, conservatives basically contended that all gays, by definition, have a political agenda and that a gay judge in the grip of this agenda is incapable of rendering a credible verdict. This was the first time a federal judge had ever been targeted on the basis of sexual orientation, but it was actually an old tactic, dusted off from the '60s, when it was used to impugn the credibility of black and female judges.

But a string of rulings put the kibosh on that tactic. And now the federal court of appeals has done the same by defending Walker. All three judges, including the George W. Bush appointee, said Walker (himself a Republican appointee) had ruled impartially, that his private life was not grounds for disqualification, and that "to hold otherwise would demonstrate a lack of respect for the integrity of our federal courts."

The same flaws in logic surfaced in the California gay-marriage case. In 2010, the conservative litigants argued in Walker's court that equal rights for gays would wreck the heterosexual marriage institution. Yet, by that standard, no married straight judge should handle the case either, since by definition such a judge would be inherently biased in favor of saving the traditional institution.

Given the historic import of Tuesday's ruling, the issue of Walker's gayness seems minor. But by depicting him as a professional rather than a stereotype, the appeals judges have taken one more step down the road to tolerance.

And increasingly, the public is already there. When the Pew Research Center first asked about gay marriage in 1996, only 27 percent of Americans approved; the latest Pew spread is 50-50. Gallup's figures are more bullish: The polling firm says that 53 percent of all Americans support gay marriage, the highest share ever.

And given the fact that support is greatest among Americans under 30, it's clear that gay marriage is a demographic inevitability -- and, sooner rather than later, a dead political issue.

Dick Polman is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Commentary

Sorry Mr.Polman this is still a hot buttoned issue after all the way the Massachusetts SJC ruled UNCONSTITUTIONALLY on the issue of same sex marriage thus violating the Separation of powers act thus making law which is not their job.Liberals like you want it dead because of the firestorm the issue created.It has less to do with tolerance than it does that marriage is between a MAN AND A WOMAN end of story it is what God mandated not man to change whenever he/she feels like it.As far as polls are concerned it is just crap from the Pew Research Center because it stinks to high heaven pun intended