Shifting attitudes take gay rights fight across globe, experts say

[alp227]

(CNN) -- In signing Argentina's same-sex marriage law, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said debate over the issue would be "absolutely anachronistic" -- archaic, out of date -- within a few years.

Striking down California's Proposition 8 two weeks later, Judge Vaughn Walker was more specific, saying there was no evidence for old-fashioned stereotypes that painted gays "as disease vectors or as child molesters who recruit young children into homosexuality."

Banning people from marrying based on sexual orientation, the President Reagan appointee explained, is "irrational."

"Often courts will make decisions that are predictors of what public opinion is going to be a few years from now," said Brian Powell, an Indiana University sociology professor and co-author of the upcoming book, "Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family."

As Walker indicated, attitudes are changing, and waning are concepts that homosexuality harms children, defies biblical teachings or destroys the fabric of society.

"Public attitudes don't change really quickly, but this is one that's changing really, really quickly," Powell said.

The trend is similar abroad, especially among younger people, said Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia University law professor who heads the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. The center has handled asylum cases for gay people fleeing persecution in countries including Jamaica, Brazil, Uzbekistan and Ivory Coast.

Research indicates younger people are beginning to see sexual orientation as "benign variation, so that the differences between gay and nongay couples are simply not so interesting," Goldberg said in an e-mail.

Full: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/19/same.sex.marriage.global.fight/index.html

[joeybee12]

1. KNR!