Apr 17, 2009  |  By: Joey DiGuglielmo  | COMMENTS     

April’s triple triumph on the front lines of the U.S. same-sex marriage wars — Vermont lawmakers approved marriage on April 7, the same day D.C. City Council voted to recognize marriages performed elsewhere, and the Iowa Supreme Court on April 3 ruled in favor of gays — have many on both sides of the ideological divide wondering if the issue is on the cusp of a tipping point.

Gay activists are saying it’s possible, even likely, that the issue is far enough along to have reached an unquantifiable inevitability now that same-sex marriage is legal in four states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Iowa). But last year’s bitter loss in California (Proposition 8’s approval on the November ballot outlawed same-sex marriage there, which had been legal since a state Supreme Court ruling in May) and the 29 state constitutional amendments restricting marriage to one man and one woman make it clear gay activists are far from home free.

Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson, who’s gay, said, “We have tremendous wind in our sails” and “each success moves us further toward our goals.”

Richard Socarides, a gay New York attorney who was a White House adviser under President Bill Clinton, said, “there’s certainly more momentum than there’s ever been.”

Mike Jones, a gay blogger and communications director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, said the movement is “definitely heading toward a point where there will be unstoppable momentum.”

Even conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote in an op-ed last week that, “The battle over same-sex marriage is on the way to being lost.” And Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, who didn’t respond to Blade requests seeking comment, told USA Today last week that he sees Vermont as “a landmark” and “body blow” to conservatives who had previously blamed setbacks on “activist judges.”

But all the gay activists who spoke to the Blade for this story cautioned against oversimplifying the timing of this month’s victories and being lulled into an assumption that the heavy lifting is over.

“We’ll really be on a roll if people hear the wake-up call and don’t hit the snooze button,” Wolfson said. “We need to use this opportunity to talk to non-gay people about why marriage matters. We have to be willing to break the silence and not become complacent.”

“There’s an understandable tendency to get excited when we see this,” said lesbian Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. “But we have to be clear — we still have much work to do and the work is continuing.”

Was this month’s triple whammy the tipping point boon gay activists have yearned for for decades? Opinions vary.

“I think it depends on what you mean by tipping point,” said lesbian Amy Balliett, board member and co-founder of Join the Impact, a group that formed almost instantaneously in November and organized a series of Prop 8 protests in dozens of U.S. cities. “My definition means the domino that you can attribute to the whole effect of the rest of the dominos tipping. If you think of it that way, then yes, I think of last week as being that domino, but there’s still a lot more we have to do.”

Others said it’s impossible to say when or if the tipping point has occurred.

“When you’re in the middle of history, it’s hard to tell,” said lesbian Carisa Cunningham, director of public affairs for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). “Five years ago, same-sex couples started marrying in Massachusetts, now in the last six months we’ve seen three more states follow. It certainly looks like a tipping point, but whether this opens the floodgates or is the beginning of a long dry spell, we’ll have to wait and see. It certainly feels great.”

While some, like Nipper, acknowledge that “a lot of momentum happened after Prop 8,” she and others say it’s important not to oversimplify the timing and assume Vermont and Iowa were related to that.

“It’s not like they just sprung up overnight from nowhere,” Wolfson said. “They were the products of a lot of work ... these were seeds that had been sown that dramatically bore fruit last week.”

Cunningham agrees.

“I think it was less a matter of it being a historic moment than the fact that an entire army of people were working for years on this,” she said. “This was the fruit of the labors of many people.”

Lara Schwartz, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, said that although the “rapid succession” of this month’s action ...