I am not optimistic that this is just another Roe v. Wade or that we’ve reached Peak Leftism. The real question is whether the left is correct (at least on a political level) that we are the equivalent of the last defenders of Jim Crow. Are we the last gasp of a dying moral system that, in a generation, will be universally derided?
I’m not familiar enough with the civil rights debate to speak with certainty, but my general impression is that we do not need to be that pessimistic.
Realistically, I don’t think we’re going to be rolling back the Supreme Court decision, and it will remain the case that certain opinions will not be able to be given voice in public and will risk your job in some circles. Nonetheless, while we may not be there yet, I do think support for expanding gay rights will top out at some point—hopefully sooner rather than later, and that the sources of societal opposition aren’t going to be washed away or reduced to a tiny corner of the internet. We are still going to have a significant number of people who believe that—at least in their personal opinion—gay sex is a sin rather than a matter of pride, and marriage is between a man and a woman.
The major factor here is the Church. The civil rights movement was, in a lot of ways, explicitly Christian, and it had the support (or least, no significant opposition) from the entirety of mainstream Christianity--including conservative Southern denominations.
The Church is on the other side of this one. Is it winning over minds? Not really. Is it losing influence over society as a whole and over its own adherents? Yes. But it’s still there, and, outside of true-believing leftists and their institutions, it’s not (yet) being treated with opprobrium. And it’s mostly standing firm. Aside from the liberal Protestants, who were already completely coopted by secular humanism and a few flaky evangelical personalities, the Church is out there teaching (at least officially) the truth about human sexuality.
Similarly, the right hasn’t really caved. This is where Michael New is correct about the significance of social conservatism as a political movement. Its role at this point—at least for the time being—is probably not an offensive attempt to roll back what the courts have done, but to defend the rights of dissenters and keep social conservatism within the Overton Window.
The big question here is whether or when the Republican Party will officially sell us out. I’m not entirely pessimistic on this score. The GOP is lost without social conservatives. The idea that “socially liberal, economically conservative” is the way of the future has been thrown around forever, but it doesn’t actually work, and I think the GOP mostly knows this. The same folks who want gay rights are good-thinking people who also want an intrusive federal government to save the environment, protect the poor, and … protect gay rights! The idea that the cultural part of liberalism is “libertarian” only makes sense in the alternative reality of Libertarians. Sexual revolution = more broken families = more welfare (and more votes for Democrats). The GOP knows that ditching social conservatives means political death. While all we will get out of them is lip service and (hopefully) judicial appointments that will at least slow things down, that’s not nothing. Lip service helps keep the Overton Window from collapsing. Judicial appointments will be important for protecting the rights of dissenters and slowing down the next project of the left.
Of course, the GOP may be doomed, but this has little to do with the unpopularity of social conservatism per se and more to do with immigration and the actual decline of marriage, which is the decline of the traditional American middle class way of life that (at least in theory) the GOP represents in a way that distinguishes it from the pure technocracy of the Democrats. (And, of course, this decline isn't entirely unrelated to immigration.)
That decline is the larger issue behind all this.
The question, when we talk about “peak left” or “peak gay”, is how long this can go on. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a reaction from the silent majority (because, unlike 1973, it's not a majority any more), but how much longer can the welfare state grow and grow to take the place of natural ties? How much longer can the native population maintain below-replacement birth rates without major social upheaval?
It just doesn’t seem sustainable. If social conservatives are right, then, it’s not sustainable.
Of course, things can still get a lot worse, but the hope would be that the run-in with reality (and, one hopes, a signficant portion of the population that remains recalcitrant) will weaken the ability of the state to enforce its ridiculous dogmas.
