In his piece on gay marriage for McClatchy Newspapers, David Lightman quotes PPI president Will Marshall:
Court cases addressing large social issues can reflect trends already under way in society, seen in popular culture and taking hold in the country’s psyche.
The 1954 ruling on desegregation came seven years after Jackie Robinson had integrated baseball. In the years after that, white Americans were exposed to black artists such as Bill Cosby and Diahann Carroll on television. Similarly, gays and lesbians have become more widely accepted in society, in part as more of them reveal their orientation and are embraced by friends and family, and as the culture portrays them as part of the mainstream.
“Social change is organic,” said Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist group. “It takes time for people to accept different concepts and ideas.”
Read Lightman’s whole piece here.
