A couple of things have just happened in the fight for marriage equality that are very remarkable.
One of these was Hillary Clinton's video announcement that she supports gay marriage, and the other was Amazon's Kindle ad that debuted not long ago featuring a reference to same-sex marriage in a positive light.
I think it is difficult to understate just how important these events are.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw the Kindle ad for the first time. It's been diaried here, and people were certainly entertained by it. But it really made me pause.
A soon as I saw that ad, the word that popped into my mind was "Appomattox". When a for-profit outfit with as large a reach as Amazon calculates that it is in their interest to deliberately portray same-sex marriage in a positive light in order to promote sales, that to me is verification that the issue is objectively dead. Amazon isn't here to make people happy. They are here to make money. They would not roll out an ad like that unless they were damn certain that it reflected the prevailing attitude among their potential customers (those 18-54, presumably). That alone made me want to write a diary a couple weeks ago, but I didn't want to do it on one data point.
But today's Hillary announcement is also much more significant than people are giving it credit for. It was not long ago at all that Karl Rove and company were trying to get gay marriage bans onto state ballots because they knew it would help their candidate. We've seen a bit of a reversal of this of late on some state ballots, but what Hillary did today was put a stake in the ground nationally. Once again, it is so obvious that support of gay marriage is the majority position now, that Hillary chose it as the issue to essentially debut her 2016 campaign with. She made a point of releasing a video on the issue and daring Republicans to oppose her on it. Some of them will take the bait, and some (such as business interests who just want tax loopholes and could care less about gay marriage) will be frustrated that they are now saddled with a party that insists upon taking such obviously unpopular positions. Hillary Clinton is acutely aware of this and has chosen gay marriage as the opening salvo of her 2016 campaign. Even Al Gore in 2000 was saying he believed marriage was between a man and a woman, because that's what you had to say then. But not only is Hillary, the obvious frontrunner, the Amazon.com of the 2016 presidential race, saying the opposite, she is actually making it the debut issue that we should identify her with, and she looked damn statesmanlike doing it. For all of us who support marriage equality, whether gay or straight, I think we have to stand back and appreciate just how remarkable that is. I think she just made it Hillary 1, GOP Nominee 0 right there.
The Republicans have not only opposition to same-sex marriage, but also support for a personhood amendment printed in their party platform. These are becoming more and more wildly unpopular positions, and they will only become more so over the next four years. But the GOP is stuck with them. I believe we can expect Clinton to score her second easy empty-net goal by publicly opposing draconian abortion measures in the months to come. But that's a topic for another diary.
In any case, I believe that it no longer matters what the Supreme Court does with Prop 8 or anything else. It would be great to see them accelerate the push for equal rights, but it is now only a matter of time, and not much time at that. For the first time, I confidently believe that same-sex marriage is an inevitability in the entire United States of America.
When Rick Santorum returns to his proverbial home in this matter, should we allow him to keep his horse and baggage? General Grant, in his magnanimity, would have said so.