Are Gay-Rights Court Rulings Spurring Change?

Time magazine and now the conservative Wall Street Journal have articles raising the question of whether or not the recent string of pro-LGBT court rulings are helping or hindering the advancement of gays rights in the public opinion. Personally, I make the case that they ARE spurring change despite the recall of three Iowa Supreme Court justices that the Christianists hold up as evidence to the contrary. Between low voter turn out, huge out of state Christofascist funding against the justices, and virtually no campaigning by the justices to counter the NOM backed out of state based assault, the Iowa results do not tell the real story. Nor do they take into account that often the courts have been well ahead of public opinion on matters of equal rights. For example, when the California Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage in that state, public opinion was more against interracial marriage than is the case now with gay marriage. Ditto for Loving v. Virginia in terms of opinion within Virginia even as late as 1968. Or take the case of Brown v. Board of Education which was anything but supported by public opinion of the time, especially in the South. The courts in my view are supposed to lead - otherwise there would often be no need to protect the rights of minorities under the Constitution. Here are highlights first from Time:
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In the 17 years since Hawaii's Supreme Court issued the first ruling in favor of gay marriage, it has been judges — not lawmakers, and certainly not the voters in 30-odd state referendums banning gay marriage — who have sided with same-sex couples seeking to wed. That's never been clearer than it is now, with three different federal opinions in favor of gay rights that together threaten to end America's long history of legal discrimination against gays.
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[S]ome legal scholars say history suggests that the courts, no matter what they decree, cannot persuade a reluctant public to embrace social change — in fact, they may even polarize the issue. "Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, it's been the underlying view of political liberals that victories in court will give them the social changes they feel are needed, and do it faster [than waiting for change to happen on its own]," Professor Mike Klarman of Harvard Law School tells TIME. "But such rulings have often brought significant political backlashes."
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That doesn't mean the historic gay-rights legal wins of 2010 are doomed to be Pyrrhic victories. It's simply too soon to know whether the courts' decisions will backfire or will help spur change.
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The Wall Street Journal correctly states that Time punted on answering the question. Again, I think in the long run court rulings do accelerate change even if in the short term there is a backlash. Once the power of the law has been stripped from the forces pushing to maintain prejudice and bigotry, the wheels are set in motion for societal views to change. Hence the rising anti-gay hysteria of the Religious Right and hate groups like Family Research Council. They know that such is the case and are desperate to block changes in the law that will take away a powerful argument for their advocacy of LGBT inferiority and anti-gay discrimination. Here's a sampling of what the WSJ had to say:
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The article, not surprisingly, does not answer the question, but it does offer food for thought about the recent trilogy of opinions on gay rights: the July ruling out of Massachusetts declaring the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional; Judge Vaughn Walker’s August ruling overturning Prop 8; and last month’s decision by Virginia Philips to halt Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
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In short, the article posits, Supreme Court opinions, standing alone, can not accomplish significant social change; it takes legislation for that to happen. Judges, of course, are not in the public polling business. They’re generally not encouraged to calibrate their rulings to ensure they are line with the prevailing views of the day. On hot button issues, judges operate in the more rarefied air of deciding whether conduct comports with the Constitution.
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And generally, the Constitution does not support discrimination against minorities whether it be based on claimed religious belief or otherwise. Thus, again, why the Christianists hate the courts.