Hope for the future

This from Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times for December 3:

A 1958 poll found that 96 percent of whites disapproved of marriages between blacks and whites. In 1959 a judge justified Virginia's ban on interracial marriage by declaring that "Almighty God ... did not intend for the races to mix."

Someday, we will regard opposition to gay marriage as equally obtuse and old-fashioned.

I expressed much the same hope in the wake of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision last month that banning same-sex marriages could not be justified under the state constitution. We can perhaps take hope from the fact that 45 years ago, opposition to interracial marriage, at least among whites, was far more extreme than opposition to same-sex marriage among the general public is today, with 59% against it.

As I said before, "small steps, small steps."

Still, 45 years is a long time to ask people to wait....