Good point about the five states.

And, to clarify, I don’t think so much that people will lie as much as they will find that their views migrate to be consistent with those that are socially acceptable.

Aunt Thelma won’t lie to the polls, she’ll just find herself in agreement with what Charlie (“and he’s a doctor”) explained to her and, low and behold, Bessie and Gertie do too. In fact, half the ladies at bingo agree. So there ya have it.

Great comments. On point number 1, yes, support for SSM goes down when 3 options are presented, but so does the number for “no recognition whatsoever”. For a while, it was something like 25/35/40, then 33/33/33, and now it is generally 40/35/25, give or take. I really think pollsters need to ask both the 3-option and the 2-option questions, since you want to know how those civil union supporters would break if only give 2 options.

I totally agree with you on the “inevitability” mantra. It definitely has a useful role to play, as evidenced by NOM’s constant, frantic efforts to rebut it. But it is not an argument on the merits and it shouldn’t be used to give any of us comfort. Even if the mantra is right, the “inevitable” can be held off for many years and decades. What good will it do any of us if the “inevitable” victory arrives in 2075?

Look at DADT repeal. A little GOP maneuvering and a ticking clock easily could have thwarted it and in that case, DADT would have survived another 10-15 years.

The only thing in the post that I think is wrong is your assertion that lying to pollsters will increase. I read a study on this very issue recently (which I can find if you are interested) and the conclusion was that the “drift” or “Bradley effect” in polling on this issue has been decreasing.

Thanks for the tip about “Before Stonewall!” I just added it to our Netflix queue. I’m not sure if that’s the film I was referring to, but if we saw it, it must have been in a theater back in 1985. My partner has a much better memory than me, so he will know. He can’t understand how I can completely forget seeing particular films, while he remembers details. However, I remember completely useless stuff, like the specific seats where we sat in a restaurant ten years ago.

Besides, it’s common knowledge that the bill in Rhode Island failed due to the DEMOCRATIC leader in their Senate, Theresa Paiva Weed. She is deadset against marriage equality, and I think she’ll have to be voted out before anything changes there. In Maryland, polling was not so favorable…only 46% or so in one poll favored marriage equality, much lower than the 53% in this nationwide poll. And New York, well, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Even if more people in Minnesota favor marriage equality by next year, I don’t think they’ll comprise enough of the voting public to offset the legions of churchgoers commanded by their leaders to double-down on discrimination in that state, but we’ll see about that too.

“Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (1985)is a documentary about evolution, namely the evolution of gay culture in the U.S. from the early 1920s to the Stonewall riot of 1969. Embellished with archival footage and photography from five decades, the film most prominently features the gay underground of the ’20s and ’30s, the rise of gay service in the military and workforce during WWII, the persecution of gays as “subversives” and “sexual perverts” in the state department by Senator McCarthy, the growth of the first grassroots political organizations for gay men and lesbians in the ’50s, and of course, the civil rights movement. Commentary is provided by the gay men and lesbians who came of age in the years leading up to Stonewall.”

As far as Minnesota, remember too that we have a year and a half of demographics to shift in our favor in the meantime as well, and unlike California or Maine, a blank vote on the question counts as a No, which will immediatly benefit our side by at least 1%.

You need to be reminded to look at where we are today in the context of where we’ve been. Here are two documentary films to help you do that:

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. Netflix description: “First released in 1977, this landmark documentary chronicles the experiences of some two dozen gay and lesbian Americans living throughout the country during the early days of the gay rights movement. Directed by a coalition of gay and lesbian filmmakers, the movie features interviews with poet Elsa Gidlow, activist Harry Hay and others who reflect candidly on growing up in a country that was still deeply and almost uniformly anti-gay.”

PBS’ American Experience: Stonewall Uprising. Netflix description: “Through eyewitness interviews and archival footage, documentary filmmakers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner recapture a pivotal moment in time that mobilized a generation of gay activists and marked the dawn of the modern Gay Rights Movement. Much like Rosa Parks’s symbolic refusal to move to the back of the bus, gay bar patrons’ refusal to comply with a police raid at Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn in 1969 would change the course of history.” This aired very recently on PBS. I seem to recall seeing a much earlier film about this, but I can’t think of the title.

The question now is not if we will win full equality, but exactly when.

I’ve been living as a gay person literally since the summer of Stonewall. When I remind myself where we were in 1969, it is utterly astonishing to see the-line-in-the-sand now drawn at marriage. We are absolutely way beyond the tipping point in terms of gay rights in general. There is no going back.

If the tide were truly turning for good, we’d have seen easy wins for marriage this year in Maryland, Rhode Island, and New York. The first 2 are dead in the water and the last is almost dead. I still think things could start going in the wrong direction again very easily.

This is all conjecture, the more pessimistic kind, but I hope it all happens the way Timothy lays it out.