Word: gayness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that didn't affect the lives of most people. They were important moral and symbolic issues, to be sure. And they were difficult issues, although their subtleties were obscured by extremists, who tended to dominate the debate. Still, the people directly affected by the so-called social issues - abortion, gay marriage, racial preferences - pale in comparison with the tens of millions who have lost their jobs and fortunes in the past year and with the global, life-and-death impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Consequently, social issues weren't decisive in the elections...
...Supreme Court, which restarted a tired debate about affirmative action. And while the blowhards have taken up their battle stations - the leadership of the Republican Party, especially, seems to have shifted from politics to infotainment - the terrain on these issues has shifted subtly in the past few years. (Indeed, gay marriage - once the hottest of hot buttons - seems to be easing toward public acceptance, as state after state approves it.) (See pictures of the gay-rights movement...
...Watch a gay-marriage wedding video...
When super-lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies went to court last week to ask a federal judge to toss out California's Proposition 8, one might have expected longtime gay-marriage advocates to welcome the move with open arms. After all, not only is Olson, 69, one of the preeminent members of the Supreme Court bar and Boies an acclaimed trial lawyer who famously squared off with Olson in 2000 when they took opposing sides in the Supreme Court's landmark Bush v. Gore election case. But perhaps even more important symbolically, Olson is a former top lawyer...
...much as they appreciate having two such prominent lawyers on their side, gay-rights veterans worry that Olson and Boies' approach could backfire. Now is no time to test the federal judiciary - where conservatives hold sway - on the issue of gay marriage, they argue. (See pictures of the gay-rights movement, from Stonewall to Prop...