Five reason equality is winning

Great article in the WaPo identifies 5 reasons we are winning.

1. Rapid cultural shifts: more gay people coming out
2. An ally in the White House: the President evolved
3. A problem of overreach: if the other side had compromised, offering civil unions and legal rights, but they went out of their way to deny us any recognition
4. Religious influence rises — and falls: the rise of the nones
5. Belligerence

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing proponents of traditional marriage was a negative image that they were never able to overcome. While chafing at comparisons to racism and Jim Crow laws, the matriarch of the traditional marriage movement, Maggie Gallagher, concedes that her side has been labeled as “hateful and bigoted.” ...

Some conservative activists say they brought it on themselves. 

“There was the evangelical belligerence, often, in the last generation that spoke, for instance, about the gay agenda, in which there was this picture, almost as though there is a group of super villains in a lair, plotting somewhere the downfall of the family,” Moore told a gathering of journalists in March. 

Conservatives also weathered a host of guilt-by-association charges, which were equally hard to dislodge. In Arizona, a bill that supporters said would protect religious freedom was conveyed as license to turn gays away from public businesses. Evangelical opposition to homosexuality was exported to Africa, which took the form of harsh laws to jail or even sentence to death known homosexuals. 

In short, it was no longer popular or politically correct to stand against popular culture and a swiftly changing popular opinion. 

“They showed no compassion for gay people, they didn’t offer any substitutes like protecting gay families or gay kids,” Rauch said. “That lack of compassion came through. It took a little while to register, but the American public does not like lack of compassion.”