Atrios says this, but I don't believe it:
in 20 years just about everybody who lifted one finger to fight same sex marriage will wonder just why the hell they cared
— Atrios (@Atrios) December 19, 2013except the grifters, of course, they'll remember it paid for the house
— Atrios (@Atrios) December 19, 2013I don't think it's going to be that simple. What's more likely is that right-wingers are going to start talking about gay rights the way they talk about black civil rights these days.
Surely you've noticed that the overwhelming majority of right-wingers now praise Martin Luther King to the skies and insist that the civil rights movement righted a great wrong. You've noticed wingers trying to make King one of their own and attacking the Democratic Party as a historically racist institution.
You've also noticed that right-wingers feel aggrieved anytime a non-white person points to a present-day racial injustice. They feel that pointing out a racial injustice is the worst possible act of racism -- racism against white people.
That's probably how right-wingers are going to talk about gay rights in the future. They'll agree in theory that rights must not be infringed; in practice, everything that goes gay people's way will be another example of reverse discrimination against heterosexuals. They'll agree on marriage and joint benefits and so on, but they'll scour the news for every possible example of what they already call "LGBT fascism."
Basically, the second part of this is true now: over here we have a local talk-radio guy on Fox News comparing Phil Robertson to Dr. King, over there we have right-wingers angrily recounting the rather-too-perfect story of a straight male gym teacher who says a lesbian boss at a Manhattan private school fired him for being heterosexual and married.
Atrios thinks, I guess, that the anti-gay grifters will just cash in and move on to something else. Not really. They'll stop trying to deprive gay people of equal citizenship and just concentrate on trying to persuade straight people that they're sexual Alan Bakkes -- the people who really deserve to have anti-discrimination laws protecting them. The war won't end -- not anytime soon.