I expect to see gay marriage and marijuana legalized in my lifetime. (I really liked typing that sentence.)
I’ve been feeling this way for quite some time, and, luckily for me, Nate Silver does the math.
Nate on gay marriage:
Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong correspondence between the religiosity of a state and its propensity to ban gay marriage, with a particular “bonus” effect depending on the number of white evangelicals in the state.
Marriage bans, however, are losing ground at a rate of slightly less than 2 points per year. So, for example, we’d project that a state in which a marriage ban passed with 60 percent of the vote last year would only have 58 percent of its voters approve the ban this year.
By Nate’s calculations almost half of the states would vote against a marriage ban by 2012. (Delaware would be ready in the year 2011) I’m not surprised. And while events can happen to change 538’s model, it won’t alter the outcome, only the time line. Gay marriage will come to pass, and the main reason for this will be familiarity. What I mean by familiarity is that in today’s America most people know a gay person. They are part of our families, friends, and co-workers, and once you know someone stereotyping becomes nearly impossible. Those people suddenly have names. Whether you’re gay or straight, it becomes personal. And personal equals important. No wonder the far right is yelling louder. They’re trying to drown out the names of friends and family members being put forth by the opposition. For their only chance of stopping gay marriage lies in removing the individual from their equation.
Even their battle cry rings hollow. Sanctity of marriage? Nobody’s buying it, which leaves the far right preaching to an ever shrinking choir rather than adding converts. Familiarity has cost this group big time. No longer can they demonize the gay community through stereotypes, which explains the mantra “love the sinner, hate the sin.” I remember when this phrase came into the main stream, and hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but now, looking back, I believe this acknowledgment of the individual was the first crack in the anti-gay league’s armor.
Marijuana falls under the familiarity blanket as well, and while, on the surface, it seems a strange to link the two issues there is a correlation. Nate’s chart on this issue is telling.
More important to the policy debate, however, may be the fraction of adults who have used marijuana at any point in their lifetimes. This is a dual-peaked distribution, with one peak occurring among adults who are roughly age 50 now, and would have come of age in the 1970s, and another among adults in their early 20s.
Used marijuana at any point in their lifetime = familiarity. Familiarity = Reefer Madness was a joke. Actually, it was more than a joke – it was a lie. And it was exposed, which never bodes well when trying to influence behavior. Once you lie people tend to stop listening.
The interesting thing about both these issues is they cut across generational lines. Another way of saying that is to realize that younger people are more familiar with gay people and marijuana. They don’t believe the lies.
So, the times they are a changin’, and I couldn’t be happier.