America’s Coming Out Election: How Gay Issues Became Mainstream

Gay is closer to ordinary than it has ever been in America after unprecedented voter support for same-sex marriage in four states. But beyond Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington, Election Day 2012 produced other milestones and will likely be remembered as the day gay rights came fully out of the closet to take its place along other facets of everyday public life in mainstream America.

By winning at the polls in those four states, gay rights supporters ended an unbroken losing streak that had dated to 1998, when Hawaii voters overwhelmingly voted to amend their constitution to let lawmakers ban gay marriage. State legislatures, notably New York’s last year, have legalized gay marriage, but never before had voters endorsed the idea at the ballot box.

Public opinion on gay marriage, like on most things political in today’s America, remains split. Numbers released this week by the Pew Center show that in the central southern states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, barely a third of respondents favor gay marriage. But everywhere else the question is either much closer, or decidedly favorable.

But those numbers only hint at a broader momentum. Gay rights supporters won other prizes, as well. Across the country, gay candidates and those who were strongly supportive of gay rights won their races. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin was elected in Wisconsin (GOP Vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s home state), to become the nation’s first openly gay senator when the new Congress forms. Meanwhile, the man who won the right to replace her in the House of Representatives is gay, too, and he’ll join five others who are openly gay in that body, according to the Gay and lesbian Victory Fund, which contributes to campaigns by gays and gay-friendly candidates. When state legislatures across the country return for business, seven of those assemblies will welcome for the first time an openly gay member. “This is what a tippingpoint looks like,” wrote gay rights scholar Nan Hunter of Georgetown University Law Center, on her blog, Hunter of Justice. Equally jubilant was the nation’s largest gay rights advocacy group – the Human Rights Campaign – which was still headlining the news on its website as late as Friday: “Equality Landslide. Unprecedented mobility for equality.”

http://nation.time.com/2012/11/12/americas-coming-out-election-how-gay-issues-became-mainstream/