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>that's sad that we're still at this point That said, public opinion is changing very rapidly. XKCD 1431 (http://xkcd.com/1431/ http://xkcd.com/1431/) offers a

>that's sad that we're still at this point That said, public opinion is changing very rapidly. XKCD 1431 (http://xkcd.com/1431/ http://xkcd.com/1431/) offers an interesting visualization and comparison between gay marriage and interracial marriage. According to XKCD's source, interracial marriage didn't reach majority approval until 1995, while gay marriage already reached majority approval in 2011. Now obviously this rift could be the result of oddly-worded polls, data mis-interpretation or some other factor and it shouldn't be taken as a strict source, but I believe it speaks volumes all the same

silencio 12y ago
Majority opinion may change but there are still so many holdouts. Which is why I'm glad to see things like this. I'm Asian and I married a white guy. It's only been seven months. I lost count of the number of people that raised their eyebrows because of my new European last name (less than the people surprised that he also changed his name!) and also lost count of how many people assumed my husband was Asian ~not~ a big white bearded guy. In SF Bay Area of all places. That's like the most common variety of interracial marriages here. But... the best wrench I threw into the mix? I'm pansexual. If gay marriage has a long way to go still, understanding that I am personally no less attracted to women/others for having married a man is gonna take another 100 years. Even for gay/lesbian folks. It's very weird.
- melvinmt 12y ago
  Well if you acknowledge that the names are considered European/Asian as you say yourself, and you switch up names on purpose, is it that strange that people are surprised that the person doesn't match up their name? At least your kids will have less problems with this as they have both "bloods" running through their veins. I think the problem is with the concept of names itself, if you're aiming for true etno-neutrality.
  - rglullis 12y ago
    > At least your kids (...) will have both bloods? Are you sure you thought this through?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - melvinmt 12y ago
      I'm not sure what's wrong with that statement (I'm also not a native speaker). Please let me know how I could have worded it better. (In my native language, Dutch, it's common to refer to people of mixed race as having "mixed blood". I can find similar statements made in English on Google)
      - mercer 12y ago
        Interesting. Maybe I misunderstand you, but every single Dutch person I know refers to mixed race as 'halfbloed', which means half-blood, which, now that I think of it, sounds rather racist.
        zorbo 12y ago
        As a dutch person, why do you think that sounds racist? It's like bloodlines. One half from one bloodline, one half from another bloodline. It's mostly used to refer to offspring from two differently colored people (not necessarily races), but I don't see the term "halfbloed" as particularly racist?
        thm76 12y ago
        You could read "half-blood" as only one half of the blood being of the "good" type. That is, you're only "half" as good as a person which has only the "good" type of blood.
        lotsofmangos 12y ago
        In English, at best it sounds woefully inaccurate as that isn't really how blood works, but bloodlines are generally the sort of thing either discussed by people who trace royals and believe in the divine rights of kings and stuff like that, or people or are worried about theirs being diluted due to a woeful misunderstanding of how biology works that would be amusing if they didn't tend to be such utter bastards, or those who breed weirdly malformed dogs and then take them to shows, rather than those who are particularly interested in the parentage of someone.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - smtddr 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality
    - foldr 12y ago
      Being pansexual does not necessarily imply that your have a gender identity other than male/female.
- anoncow 12y ago
  Kudos on the name thing!
- _kst_ 12y ago
  After re-reading this a couple of times, it's not 100% clear to me whether you're male or female. That seems to be causing some confusion in some of the followup comments. (Congratulations on your marriage either way.)
dwild 12y ago
Considering it's from Randal, I guess we can trust this but to the eye, but it seems like the variation is really similar. The only real difference is that the US government doesn't help their cause where for interracial, they did way before majority. I don't know which is better but I don't believe rights should be dictated by popular opinions but by facts.
- krrrh 12y ago
  I think you're making a good point that governments followed rather than led in the case of marriage equality, however it's interesting to reflect on just how recent majority support has been in the gay community itself. Some early proponents such as Andrew Sullivan faced apathy and criticism from gay rights advocacy groups such as Human Rights Campaign in the 1980s and 1990s for even broaching the subject. It's always surprised me how so many of the strongest opponents to recognition of gay marriage were openly gay themselves. TL;DR marginalized group ideology is strange
ScottBurson 12y ago
Isn't that a fascinating graph? What can one make of it? Maybe that although racial prejudice was common throughout the 20th century and is not gone today, there was always a sense of its wrongness that was evident to legislators and judges. In contrast, homophobia is still a very acceptable prejudice to a lot of people. I think one can also see in this graph the effects of the determined efforts by the American right, over the last few decades, to influence the makeup of the judiciary.
- bzbarsky 12y ago
  Another possible interpretation of this graph is that in the US today, the feeling "I disapprove of X, so X should be illegal" is a much more common approach to politics than it used to be. That's also my explanation for the "put people in jail for letting their kids play unsupervised" stuff that's been going on... Chances are, of course, that the graph reflects a combination of several factors.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Consider that for interracial marriage, the US was lagging international opinion substantially. E.g. in large parts of Europe there either haven't been restrictions on interracial marriage, or they have been very limited and lifted earlier, and in many countries such as the UK, there is a history of interracial marriages going back centuries (e.g. many people married Indians that came to Britain after the establishment of the East India Company). Much further resistance evaporated when European countries had an acute shortage of men following World War I, that was filled by increased immigration from own colonies. While that may not have had a direct impact, most of the arguments against interracial marriage were thus demonstrably false, by looking to other countries, and a substantial proportion of the population of the US had come from countries where interracial marriage was legal and somewhat accepted when they emigrated. Further, with interracial marriages, the marriages had the support of a far larger amount of churches, and legalisation happened amidst a general major push for equalisation of rights that had rallied a lot of people. On the other hand, many of the same countries that have been liberal about interracial marriages maintained laws targeting gay people far longer, and both domestically and internationally there was not nearly the same momentum for gay rights. Again consider the UK, where it took until 1994 for a serious attempt to reduce the age of consent for male gay sex to the same as for straight sex (from 21 to 16; bizarrely the UK did not have an age of consent for sexual acts between females). It took until 2001 for that to become reality: The first attempt was defeated; a court challenge to the European Court of Human Right forced the UK government to try again; it was defeated twice more, and then the House of Lords dragged its feet long enough that the government was able to use Parliament Act to push it through with only the support of the House of Commons in late 2000. As late as then, people seriously used as an argument that we needed to "protect the children".
tjradcliffe 12y ago
Gay marriage isn't necessarily a great proxy for general approval (likely neither is inter-racial marriage.) I live in a very liberal city in a country where gay marriage has been legal for a decade and has widespread approval, and still encounter a surprising amount of anti-gay prejudice. At least is surprises me, so maybe I'm kind of stupid. So while the rapid change of opinion on gay marriage in the US is great, it is still I think a generational shift to get to the point where gay people won't have a greater than 10% chance that any random person they meet won't be deeply prejudiced against them.

silencio 12y ago

Majority opinion may change but there are still so many holdouts. Which is why I'm glad to see things like this. I'm Asian and I married a white guy. It's only been seven months. I lost count of the number of people that raised their eyebrows because of my new European last name (less than the people surprised that he also changed his name!) and also lost count of how many people assumed my husband was Asian ~not~ a big white bearded guy. In SF Bay Area of all places. That's like the most common variety of interracial marriages here. But... the best wrench I threw into the mix? I'm pansexual. If gay marriage has a long way to go still, understanding that I am personally no less attracted to women/others for having married a man is gonna take another 100 years. Even for gay/lesbian folks. It's very weird.

melvinmt 12y ago
Well if you acknowledge that the names are considered European/Asian as you say yourself, and you switch up names on purpose, is it that strange that people are surprised that the person doesn't match up their name? At least your kids will have less problems with this as they have both "bloods" running through their veins. I think the problem is with the concept of names itself, if you're aiming for true etno-neutrality.
- rglullis 12y ago
  > At least your kids (...) will have both bloods? Are you sure you thought this through?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - melvinmt 12y ago
    I'm not sure what's wrong with that statement (I'm also not a native speaker). Please let me know how I could have worded it better. (In my native language, Dutch, it's common to refer to people of mixed race as having "mixed blood". I can find similar statements made in English on Google)
    - mercer 12y ago
      Interesting. Maybe I misunderstand you, but every single Dutch person I know refers to mixed race as 'halfbloed', which means half-blood, which, now that I think of it, sounds rather racist.
      - zorbo 12y ago
        As a dutch person, why do you think that sounds racist? It's like bloodlines. One half from one bloodline, one half from another bloodline. It's mostly used to refer to offspring from two differently colored people (not necessarily races), but I don't see the term "halfbloed" as particularly racist?
        thm76 12y ago
        You could read "half-blood" as only one half of the blood being of the "good" type. That is, you're only "half" as good as a person which has only the "good" type of blood.
        lotsofmangos 12y ago
        In English, at best it sounds woefully inaccurate as that isn't really how blood works, but bloodlines are generally the sort of thing either discussed by people who trace royals and believe in the divine rights of kings and stuff like that, or people or are worried about theirs being diluted due to a woeful misunderstanding of how biology works that would be amusing if they didn't tend to be such utter bastards, or those who breed weirdly malformed dogs and then take them to shows, rather than those who are particularly interested in the parentage of someone.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- smtddr 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality
  - foldr 12y ago
    Being pansexual does not necessarily imply that your have a gender identity other than male/female.
anoncow 12y ago
Kudos on the name thing!
_kst_ 12y ago
After re-reading this a couple of times, it's not 100% clear to me whether you're male or female. That seems to be causing some confusion in some of the followup comments. (Congratulations on your marriage either way.)

dwild 12y ago

Considering it's from Randal, I guess we can trust this but to the eye, but it seems like the variation is really similar. The only real difference is that the US government doesn't help their cause where for interracial, they did way before majority. I don't know which is better but I don't believe rights should be dictated by popular opinions but by facts.

krrrh 12y ago
I think you're making a good point that governments followed rather than led in the case of marriage equality, however it's interesting to reflect on just how recent majority support has been in the gay community itself. Some early proponents such as Andrew Sullivan faced apathy and criticism from gay rights advocacy groups such as Human Rights Campaign in the 1980s and 1990s for even broaching the subject. It's always surprised me how so many of the strongest opponents to recognition of gay marriage were openly gay themselves. TL;DR marginalized group ideology is strange

ScottBurson 12y ago

Isn't that a fascinating graph? What can one make of it? Maybe that although racial prejudice was common throughout the 20th century and is not gone today, there was always a sense of its wrongness that was evident to legislators and judges. In contrast, homophobia is still a very acceptable prejudice to a lot of people. I think one can also see in this graph the effects of the determined efforts by the American right, over the last few decades, to influence the makeup of the judiciary.

bzbarsky 12y ago
Another possible interpretation of this graph is that in the US today, the feeling "I disapprove of X, so X should be illegal" is a much more common approach to politics than it used to be. That's also my explanation for the "put people in jail for letting their kids play unsupervised" stuff that's been going on... Chances are, of course, that the graph reflects a combination of several factors.
vidarh 12y ago
Consider that for interracial marriage, the US was lagging international opinion substantially. E.g. in large parts of Europe there either haven't been restrictions on interracial marriage, or they have been very limited and lifted earlier, and in many countries such as the UK, there is a history of interracial marriages going back centuries (e.g. many people married Indians that came to Britain after the establishment of the East India Company). Much further resistance evaporated when European countries had an acute shortage of men following World War I, that was filled by increased immigration from own colonies. While that may not have had a direct impact, most of the arguments against interracial marriage were thus demonstrably false, by looking to other countries, and a substantial proportion of the population of the US had come from countries where interracial marriage was legal and somewhat accepted when they emigrated. Further, with interracial marriages, the marriages had the support of a far larger amount of churches, and legalisation happened amidst a general major push for equalisation of rights that had rallied a lot of people. On the other hand, many of the same countries that have been liberal about interracial marriages maintained laws targeting gay people far longer, and both domestically and internationally there was not nearly the same momentum for gay rights. Again consider the UK, where it took until 1994 for a serious attempt to reduce the age of consent for male gay sex to the same as for straight sex (from 21 to 16; bizarrely the UK did not have an age of consent for sexual acts between females). It took until 2001 for that to become reality: The first attempt was defeated; a court challenge to the European Court of Human Right forced the UK government to try again; it was defeated twice more, and then the House of Lords dragged its feet long enough that the government was able to use Parliament Act to push it through with only the support of the House of Commons in late 2000. As late as then, people seriously used as an argument that we needed to "protect the children".

tjradcliffe 12y ago

Gay marriage isn't necessarily a great proxy for general approval (likely neither is inter-racial marriage.) I live in a very liberal city in a country where gay marriage has been legal for a decade and has widespread approval, and still encounter a surprising amount of anti-gay prejudice. At least is surprises me, so maybe I'm kind of stupid. So while the rapid change of opinion on gay marriage in the US is great, it is still I think a generational shift to get to the point where gay people won't have a greater than 10% chance that any random person they meet won't be deeply prejudiced against them.