yesterday's news?

[topaz]

Now that same-sex marriages are legal in Massachusetts, the debate has shifted to how the issue will affect this fall's elections. As far as I can tell, the actual fact of gay marriage taking place is amounting to a huge non-issue for the electorate; the right wing admits that they're counting on the anticipated backlash to give them renewed momentum, and many conservative activists have expressed their dismay that they're not seeing more energy and outrage from their parishioners.

But this is the most encouraging thing I've seen on this morning, the first day that most couples will be able to exercise their licenses and actually get married: Google's U.S. news page has pushed same-sex marriage completely off the page, in favor of stories like an insurance executive suing a strip club for a $24,000 bar tab and the bald eagle being taken off the endangered list.

Of course this isn't the end of the debate, but it's a signal about how heavily this issue weighs on the public. Absent new and exciting political power plays, we're old news. We're yesterday's news. We're no news at all. And that's the best news I could have hoped for.

Comments

[hawkegirl.livejournal.com]

I guess the sky didn't fall down when those people were started getting married.

Now as long as those polygamists stay in their places, all will be well.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Egad! You mean people DON'T CARE! or maybe they have better things to worry about like their children getting shot at in Iraq or getting fired from a professional position only to find that the only jobs available are at Wal-Mart, McDonalds and Lowes?

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

Good point!

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

I thought a lot of people were doing the waiver thing, getting out of the three-day waiting period, and have been getting married all along. The waivers, from what I understand, are granted routinely. This, I think, explains why it's not news now - these aren't the first marriages. But maybe we're agreeing - it's not even yesterday's news - it's news from three days ago, while the other hand, the SF marriages were news for several days straight (er, so to speak). There was more to report on there, though, people were waiting for Ahnold to say anything on the subject, it came up suddenly (rather than on a fixed date pre-determined by a court ruling) and there was a lot more uncertainty about what was going on.

On the other other hand, I think that photos of happy people getting married aren't a bad thing to have on the front page. Normalizes it for people a bit.

S.

amused by linguistics

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

How about 'the SF marriages were hot news for several days in a row'?

Re: amused by linguistics

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

Sounds good. The substitution that has been generally urged (substitute "gaily forward" for "straight") didn't seem to work in this instance, so I just left it in.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*happy dance of agreement*