Stephen Bainbridge writes:
I have no doubt that some form of gay marriage is coming. And that
will, I think, on balance be a good thing. But the way in which it
arrives matters a lot. One hopes that even ardent supporters of gay
marriage recognize that the decades of Kulturkampf that followed - and still follow - Roe v. Wade is not something that ought to be repeated.
This is a pretty clear misunderstanding of the cultural and political differences between opposition to abortion rights and opposition to gay marriage.While they often get lumped together as "cultural issues," the long-term position of each is markedly different: There is no reason to think abortion will become less controversial anytime soon. However, there is every reason to think this about gay marriage.
The reason is that abortion deals with a philosophical question of where life begins, whereas gay rights are much more about one's ick factor towards gay people. Political science data back this up: With growing positive exposure to gay people in each passing generation, moral opposition to homosexuality is decreasing notably, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Anti-gay sentiment is, in its essense, just sheer bias, which will someday fall out of favor like the legal resolutions against inter-racial marriage did a few decades ago.
But abortion is deeper than that. There is no discernible generational trend on this issue. It goes slightly back and forth. There is, of course, some degree of paternalistic judgment of women's abilities to make their own decisions in the legal world of restricting reproductive rights. But it is not sheer bias. It is also, literally, a question of life and death for many people. The contested nature of that debate shows no signs of changing.
Comparing Roe v. Wade to any potential gay marriage case, then, is not helpful, because abortion would be controversial even without Roe, whereas gay marriage is growing less and less controversial because people are more and more okay with gay people.
