BRISBANE TIMES: A CULTURAL shift appears to be under way in the US in favour of same-sex marriages, with two landmark legal decisions this month and eight states set to vote on bills later this year.
Gay campaigners are celebrating a vote in the Vermont legislature last week and an earlier Iowa Supreme Court ruling, bringing to four the number of states where same-sex marriages are legal.
The mood contrasts with the despondency in November when the public in California ended a brief period in which same-sex marriages were allowed and voted for a definition of marriage as being only between a man and woman.
Evan Wolfson, the founder and executive director of the New York-based Freedom to Marry organisation, described the recent events as wonderful and said the public were beginning to see gay people in a different way.
The presidency of George Bush had been marked by social conservatism, often based on the agenda of the Christian right, he said. But the victory of Barack Obama in November had coincided with an apparent rejection of much of that agenda in favour of greater liberalisation.
"Eight years after the most polarising politics of Bush-Rove and orchestrated attacks on gay people, I think what happened in 2008 was the American people said they have had enough of divisiveness," Mr Wolfson said. >>> Agencies | Sunday, April 12, 2009
