<p>Frank Rich NYT article: The Bigots Last Hurrah. </p>
<p>…Gathering Storm was produced and broadcast for a claimed $1.5 million by an outfit called the National Organization for Marriage. This national organization, formed in 2007, is a fund-raising and propaganda-spewing Web site fronted by the right-wing Princeton University professor Robert George and the columnist Maggie Gallagher, who was famously caught receiving taxpayers money to promote Bush administration marriage initiatives. Until last month, half of the six board members (including George) had some past or present affiliation with Princetons James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. (One of them, the son of one of the 12 apostles in the Mormon church hierarchy, recently stepped down.)</p>
<p>Even the anti-Obama tea parties flogged by Fox News last week had wider genuine grass-roots support than this so-called national organization. Beyond Princeton, most straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont. There was no mass backlash. At ABC and CBS, the Vermont headlines didnt even make the evening news.</p>
<p>On the right, the restrained response was striking. Fox barely mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as to celebrate what happened in Vermont because instead of the courts making a decision, the people did. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as a biological error and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNNs Larry King that she now views committed gay relationships as a beautiful thing and a healthy thing. In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative writer Kyle Smith demolished a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered whether her errant arguments against gay equality were something else in disguise.</p>
<p>More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, Californias same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had never been and never will be an anti-gay-marriage activist. This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobsons Focus on the Family. </p>
<p>The Obamas dog had longer legs on cable than the news from Iowa and Vermont. CNNs weekly press critique, Reliable Sources, inquired why. The gay blogger John Aravosis suggested that many Americans are more worried about their mortgages than their neighbors private lives. Besides, Aravosis said, there are only so many news stories you can do showing guys in tuxes. </p>
<p>As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support at some point in the 2010s. </p>
<p>Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the rights two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a states legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. The only difference, the judge wrote, is that civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.</p>
<p>Some opponents grumbled anyway, reviving their perennial complaint, dating back to Brown v. Board of Education, about activist judges. But the judiciary has long played a leading role in sticking up for the civil rights of minorities so theyre not held hostage to a majority vote. Even if the judiciary-overreach argument had merit, it was still moot in Vermont, where the State Legislature, not a court, voted to make same-sex marriage legal and then voted to override the Republican governors veto. </p>
<p>As the case against equal rights for gay families gets harder and harder to argue on any nonreligious or legal grounds, no wonder so many conservatives are dropping the cause. And if Fox News and Rick Warren wont lead the charge on same-sex marriage, who on the national stage will take their place? The only enthusiastic contenders seem to be Republicans contemplating presidential runs in 2012. As Rich Tafel, the former president of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, pointed out to me last week, what Iowa giveth to the Democrats, Iowa taketh away from his own party. As the first stop in the primary process, the Iowa caucuses provided a crucial boost to Barack Obamas victorious and inclusive Democratic campaign in 2008. But on the G.O.P. side, the caucuses tilt toward the exclusionary hard right. </p>
<p>In 2008, 60 percent of Iowas Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. Thats the hurdle facing the partys contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. Palin even broke with John McCain on the issue during their campaign, supporting the federal marriage amendment that he rejects. This month, even as the father of Palins out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people degenerates. Such homophobia didnt even play in Alaska the State Legislature voted the nominee down and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections. </p>
<p>One G.O.P. politician who understands this is the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, who on Friday urged his party to join him in endorsing same-sex marriage. Another is Jon Huntsman Jr., the governor of Utah, who in February endorsed civil unions for gay couples, a position seemingly indistinguishable from Obamas. Huntsman is not some left-coast Hollywood Republican. Hes a Mormon presiding over what Gallup ranks as the reddest state in the country.</p>
<p>We must embrace all citizens as equals, Huntsman told me in an interview last week. Ive always stood tall on this. Has he been hurt by his position? Not remotely. A lot of people gave the issue more scrutiny after it became the topic of the week, he said, and started to see it in human terms. Letters, calls, polls and conversations with voters around the state all confirmed to him that opinion has shifted quite substantially toward his point of view. Huntsmans approval rating now stands at 84 percent.</p>
<p>He believes that social issues should not be a priority for Republicans in any case during an economic crisis. He also is an outspoken foe of the nativist language that has marked the G.O.P. of late. Huntsman doesnt share the view of some that the party was created in 1980. He yearns for it to reclaim Lincolns faith in individual dignity. </p>
<p>As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.</p>