03/28/13: A rapid and welcome shift in perceptions

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

WHEN Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio announced his support for gay marriage, it was a conclusion he reached as the result of learning that his son is gay. Knowing someone who is gay — a family member or a friend — is one of the reasons that support for marriage equality has grown.

A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center showed 28 percent of supporters — representing 14 percent of Americans — have changed their minds on the issue, with the top reason being that they know someone who is gay.

CNN released a poll Monday with similar findings: The number who support marriage equality has risen by almost the same amount as those who say they have a family member or close friend who is gay.

Pundits have coined a term for this: the “Rob Portman effect.” It could just have easily been called something else; in the days leading up to this week’s U.S. Supreme Court hearings on two cases that could affect marriage equality, numerous politicians have announced their support, including Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

Portman has been criticized by both the right and the left. Some on the left say he lacked the empathy to see that marriage equality mattered until he was personally affected. I consider that a bogus argument. Ask supporters or opponents of any issue — the death penalty, abortion, gun rights, affirmative action — and you’ll often find a personal experience has colored their opinion.

Which is the other reason that support for marriage equality has grown — the increase in those who have always supported it, namely, the Millennial generation. Pew reports that 70 percent of Millennials — ages 18 to 32 — support marriage equality.

For them, it’s never been an issue. People born since 1980 have always had gays as “our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones,” as Hillary Clinton phrased it in her video announcing her support. Millennials are 27 percent of the adult population today, up from 9 percent in 2003.

Millennials tend to look at the person as a whole, not as the parts of who they are. For them, race is not a factor; they generally have trouble understanding why interracial marriage was prohibited. Women are equals and can be — and do — pretty much what a man can. Sexuality is, well, just sexuality.

Best of all, marriage equality is not a partisan issue for them. Increasingly, it is not a partisan issue for anyone. Portman and Warner are not Millennials, nor is Karl Rove, a former Bush deputy chief of staff who recently said he could imagine a 2016 Republican presidential candidate supporting marriage equality.

The only age group in which a majority still opposes marriage equality is those 65 and over. The average age of the nine Supreme Court justices is 67.3.

Tuesday, the court heard arguments in California’s Prop 8 case. According to court observers, the questions asked by the justices indicate a reluctance to decide this case now, or if they decide, to limit it to California. I believe their reluctance is related to their age.

Unlike individuals, though, the court has a different responsibility.

Fourteen times, going back to the 1880s, the high court has ruled that marriage is a fundamental right. Such rights are, according the court, so fundamental that any law restricting them must both serve a compelling state purpose and be narrowly tailored to that purpose.

One of the 14 cases is Loving v. Virginia, a 1967 ruling in which the court struck Virginia’s — and the country’s — laws against interracial marriage. The court wrote, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

At the heart of the Loving decision is the 14th Amendment. Adopted in 1868, the amendment includes a clause that requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all.

The justices know the history, of course. They know the 14th has been invoked not just in marriage cases but also in cases to overturn racial segregation and sex discrimination. And they know it applies to marriage equality. It appears they just aren’t ready to say so.

No doubt they are astonished, as I am, at the pace of the shift in public opinion. When Virginia passed its marriage inequality amendment in 2006, I never thought I’d live to see the day when a majority of Americans would support marriage equality.

That day is here. It is no longer a matter of if the court will rule in favor of marriage equality. It’s a matter of when.