Quote:

---

In signing Argentina's same-sex marriage law, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said debate over the issue would be "absolutely anachronistic" -- archaic, out of date -- within a few years.

Striking down California's Proposition 8 two weeks later, Judge Vaughn Walker was more specific, saying there was no evidence for old-fashioned stereotypes that painted gays "as disease vectors or as child molesters who recruit young children into homosexuality."

Banning people from marrying based on sexual orientation, the President Reagan appointee explained, is "irrational."

"Often courts will make decisions that are predictors of what public opinion is going to be a few years from now," said Brian Powell, an Indiana University sociology professor and co-author of the upcoming book, "Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family."

As Walker indicated, attitudes are changing, and waning are concepts that homosexuality harms children, defies biblical teachings or destroys the fabric of society.

"Public attitudes don't change really quickly, but this is one that's changing really, really quickly," Powell said.

The trend is similar abroad, especially among younger people, said Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia University law professor who heads the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. The center has handled asylum cases for gay people fleeing persecution in countries including Jamaica, Brazil, Uzbekistan and Ivory Coast.

Research indicates younger people are beginning to see sexual orientation as "benign variation, so that the differences between gay and nongay couples are simply not so interesting," Goldberg said in an e-mail.

"Once that happens, societies have less interest in distinguishing between relationships of gay and nongay couples," she added.

Before 2008, Massachusetts (via a court ruling) was the only U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, while the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa were the only countries. Since then, four U.S. states, five countries, Washington, D.C., and Mexico City have legalized same-sex marriage.

While some of these entities have track records of defending civil rights, some may appear more curious. South Africa resides on a continent particularly hostile to gay rights, and in some African countries same-sex relationships are punishable by penal labor, flogging, imprisonment or death, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

Mexico City, Portugal and Argentina, all of which legalized same-sex marriage this year -- and Spain, which OK'd it in 2005 -- are staunchly Catholic, and the church has made clear its aversion to same-sex relationships.

Goldberg said she believes, in the Catholic countries, the emphasis on religion is trumped by a drive to ensure equality.

"My sense is that the shift in the Catholic countries to recognize same sex-couples marriages stems from a complex set of political and social reasons and has been, in some nations, an indication of the church's shrinking political clout," she said.

Argentina may fit the bill, as the country is 92 percent Roman Catholic, yet only 20 percent of the population is practicing.

His research shows American definitions of family are becoming flexible, he said, likening the same-sex marriage debate to the rumblings preceding the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision authorizing interracial marriages.

Before the miscegenation ruling, researchers found younger people, those with liberal religious views and voters with higher education levels had fewer qualms with interracial marriages.

Similar lines hold true in today's same-sex marriage debate. Powell added another variable: gender. Women have a "more inclusive" definition of family, he said.

In 2008, the U.N. General Assembly saw 66 countries declare they would support rights for gays and lesbians, yet a 2010 International Lesbian and Gay Association report said 76 countries punish people based on sexual orientation.

The number last year was 77. India dropped off the list when its court changed the penal code in July 2009.

"One country less compared to the 2009 list may seem little progress, until one realizes that it hosts one-sixth of the human population," the report said.

There are countries such as Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, which can put people to death for certain types of sexual behavior, according to the report. There are places such as Aruba and Israel that will recognize same-sex marriages but won't perform them. There are also about 20 countries or parts of countries that recognize civil unions.

Goldberg said policies in Uganda, which drafted an anti-homosexuality bill that would strengthen the nation's maximum sentence from life in prison to capital punishment, and in Iran are stark contrasts to the rest of the world, which is reluctant to condemn gays openly.

---