(Prof. Andrew Ross of NYU, the man who taught me the word "heteronormativity.")
To be crystal clear, I wholeheartedly support marriage equality for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is the obvious problem of equality under law. Civil unions are at best Don't Ask, Don't Tell incrementalism and at worst, a modern Plessy that causes further stigmatization through "othering" (please find some time to read on to Lu-in Wang's fantastic work on this.) In all likelihood, any federal attempt at civil unions would have wound up like France's PACS as a legal device primarily used by opposite sex couples. However, the assimilation foisted upon America's young homosexual population through the legalization of gay marriage works to the detriment of existing gay sociocultural norms.
Andrew Sullivan is often credited as the progenitor of the modern gay marriage movement (See Douthat, Ross.) While I'll get into it another time, my own politics were very much shaped through the lens of The Dish prior to Sullivan's defection into the Walt/Mearsheimer clique. Sullivan, a self-styled Burkean, sees incremental change and modest social unrest at the core of conservativism and that ethos has thoroughly imbued the ascension of gay marriage in the United States. President Obama (a fellow Tory, it should be noted) has similarly "evolved" into the same confederate position which seeks to use the many levers of democratic checks and balances to slowly enfranchise the LGB population* while causing minimal social unrest.
My blogging mate, correctly, believes that the tide of history is against the Republican Party and that there will come a moment when the GOP will have no choice but to support marriage equality. While the court cases, referendum, and legislative acts taken across the 50 states have proven a slow moving but powerful force for equality, it's worth noting what it has meant. The tide of history is moving inexorably towards the adoption and idealization of the heteronormative gay couple. Dan Savage is about as risqué as it gets. Swinging has been left to the 70's, and the modern family is two monogamous parents, regardless of gender. There's certainly some behavioral science to back up the utility in that structure, but unfortunately, that rise will necessarily coincide with the loss of the existing (and already collapsing) gay hookup culture.
Sure, Grindr is probably going to sell for a billion dollars any day now. OKCupid has added non-monogamous relationship types. However, just as polyamory is ever so slowly becoming a less-stigmatized (not to be confused with accepted, much less encouraged) lifestyle choice, young American gays are expected to go find a partner, a dog, a baby, and a picket fence. Essentially, the white middle class is extending to its newest upwardly mobile minority: homosexuals. In the assimilative process, gay popular culture is becoming trivialized, stereotyped even further, and removed from the everyday existence of life.
It's probably a social good that we look back at The Birdcage as a sort of minstrel show. However, I'm not entirely sure that the social value shift which has occurred since the late 20th century is without cost, and that's really the point of this post. The 50 state approach to equality may well be rendered moot by a SCOTUS decision that supports gay marriage and finds in a minority community a suspect class deserving of scrutiny of (at the very least, the formalization of) "rational basis plus." However, the social unrest and sociocultural change will likely continue unabated.
Really, it's much like anything else in a capitalist society, with growth comes cultural assimilation and gentrification, no?
*The ongoing struggle for transgender rights absolutely should not be included, as there is massively more progress to be made.
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