We're Never Going Back

Yesterday, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (my favorite of the district courts) declared the state's ban on same sex marriage unconstitutional.  It is part of a tidal wave of transformation in relation to same sex marriage in the U.S. over roughly the past decade (since roughly 2003, when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize the practice).  As of 2009, anywhere you go in New England, you can same-sex marriage.  The great states of Illinois and Minnesota?  Same sex marriage.  Renting a car to go to New Mexico -- or Washington, or Iowa?  No problem; go for it -- same sex marriage.  Kansas, Missouri and Montana are tough.  But you know what?  Here's the value that comes with legal equality and the ability to petition your government:  lawsuits are pending in all three states concerning gay marriage.  Rumor has it that Barak Obama didn't go to the opening of the Winter Olympics in Russia in part because of the country's anti-gay politics.  In these posts, I usually save the editorial remark for the end.  I'll do it now:  that was the right thing to do, Barak.

It's interesting; in Europe, same-sex partnership, a bit different than marriage, has been tolerated for some time in most of progressive, northwestern Europe (not everywhere, but most places).  Legal recognition of registered partnership in many of those states has also been in place for some time; again, not exactly marriage, but some level of institutionalization.  The move for actual marriage, however, came at roughly the same time as in the U.S.:  Denmark, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and the U.K. all came to allow it over the past ten years or so.   Gay marriage has had some spread to Latin America.  On your way to Uruguay?  Argentina?  Pack a bag and consider it.  If you're gay and you want to, you can tie the knot while you're down there.

In combination with a recent rash -- well, by pro sports standards, anyway -- of professional athletes coming out, or athletes about to join the professional ranks (hello Jason Collins and Michael Sam -- though you should call Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova and thank them for blazing a trail for you), some strange combination of America and the globe are on a path that will be very tough to shut down.  For many parts of the globe, there's no turning back; gays are attaining the civil (and most importantly, equal) rights they should have always had.  The road will be spectacularly long in other places.  That's whether it's Poland, where the country's intense Catholicism will present decades of barriers, or Iran, so spectacularly wound up in annoying the international community that the country to this day is still not a signatory (along with the Sudan and Somalia [the latter perhaps getting a pass for not having had a functioning government for two decades]) on rights treaties as basic (for example) as the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) -- not at all related to gay issues, but an example of issues in basic (ridiculously basic) social progress.  Generally, historians hesitate to talk about Zeitgeists; they're too general, and it's hard to tell what they say.  However, as far as Zeitgeists go, it's a good one in the twenty-first century for gay marriage.  Like civil rights and global anti-colonialism from an earlier time, the signs are there for global sea changes that, with time, will be tough -- maybe impossible -- to undo.