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You see it in poll after poll... The groups that support Marriage Equality the most are the younger demographics, the groups that are against Marriage Equality are the older demographics.
Obama's poll numbers among the young are pretty solid... and they are worst among those over 65.
There are many enlightened people who are older... folks who see the direction that the arc of history is bending and they aren't resisting it. Many of these enlightened older folks post on DU.
But as a percentage, the teabaggers are disproportionally represented by older whites.
50 years ago, I would suspect you'd have a hard time finding 1 in 10 people who supported gay marriage. Hell, you would have had a hard time finding much more than that supporting interracial marriage.
25 years ago... MAYBE it was up to 1 in 5.
10 years ago, and there were polls at the time showing this, it was about 1 in 3.
Now... it's more than half.
Old ideas, old paradigms, old ways of thinking die slowly.
But they die.
As we continue to bury the "pre-boomers"... their influence on the public debate will continue to wane.
Their generation would've never dreamed that a black man would become President in their lifetime. It scares so many of them to their core.
They never imagined that it would be legal for two homosexuals to marry. But it is a reality in a growing number of states. It's a tidal wave, actually. Within 10 years, you'll be hard pressed to find a state where Marriage Equality is NOT encoded in law.
My parents and in-laws are in their 70s. The social changes of today scare them. They're all teabaggers, all four of them.
I love them all, and I won't be happy when they die. But I like the fact that I'm seeing their ideas and beliefs die a little more every day.
The train can't be stopped, teabaggers. You can only succeed in delaying the inevitable.
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