Shortly after David Stivers voted with the great majority of Georgians to ban gay marriage here in 2004, his son came home from college and announced he was gay.
Stivers went through an array of fatherly responses: doubt, anxiety over relatives’ reaction, and eventually concern that his son Grant could face a lifetime of discrimination because he’s gay. Today, Stivers is a supporter of gay marriage and co-president of the Atlanta chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
“Now this issue has a face and it’s a face that I love, and I can’t turn my back,” said Stivers, 67, of Peachtree City.
Gene Vineyard has a very different view of marriage equality. His staunch opposition has never wavered from the belief that the Bible simply does not allow it. But the 76-year-old Carrollton resident is increasingly upset that much of society has come to embrace what he sees as a radical view of marriage.
Too often, he says, when someone tries to uphold the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, the gay community verbally attacks them as mean and hateful.
“If you don’t believe what they believe, they’re going to come at you,” Vineyard said. “I’m just wanting to stand up for what I believe in.”
Perhaps more than any issue of our time, gay marriage has undergone a vast evolution in this country, from a topic hardly discussed two decades ago to one that will come before the U.S. Supreme Court two days from now.
As the court prepares to weigh the constitutionality of gay marriage, Georgia will be among the states most affected should the court offer its stamp of approval. Justices will hear oral arguments on state bans on same-sex marriage in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan. Georgia’s ban, though it will not be argued, will stand or fall based on what the justices decide. A decision is expected in late June, and supporters believe this is their best chance.
Thirty-six states are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A growing number of Georgians have shifted their opinion from a decade ago, when 76 percent approved the constitutional ban. A 2013 Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll found 48 percent of Georgians in favor of gay marriage versus 43 percent against. For many millennials — born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s — gay marriage is as normal as traditional wedlock.
Behind the shift in public attitudes are very personal stories of change. In interviews with the AJC, people spoke of a change of heart when they learned a loved one was gay. Some cited the wisdom of aging. Some came to see it as a civil rights issue.
Anne Borden, an assistant professor of sociology, remembers that when she started talking about gay marriage to a class at Morehouse College about eight years ago, a third of the students walked out, unwilling to discuss it. Most textbooks on social issues didn’t even mention the topic. That has changed, she said.
“More people have been coming out (about their sexuality), and people see a cousin or someone at work is gay. That’s led to more acceptance,” said Borden, now an instructor at Western Governors University in Salt Lake City.
But the AJC also spoke to people — like Gene Vineyard in Carrollton — who’ve held onto beliefs that many see rooted in biblical teaching, who see such unions as a challenge to traditional morality and who fear these changes spell trouble for the future.
For them, the evolution of attitudes on gay marriage has meant something quite different: their views haven't changed, but the way they are viewed has. Once in a large and comfortable majority, opponents of gay marriage now find that they are under attack — from the media, from gay rights groups, from the entertainment industry, from liberals in general — for what they believe is the word of God.
“There’s a feeling of defensiveness,” said Georgia State University sociology professor Eric R. Wright. “It’s a feeling similar to that of minorities and other stigmatized groups.”
‘I am not a hateful person’
Jill Norton Wooddall feels that defensiveness and says she doesn’t deserve to be vilified for what she believes.
“I don’t support gay marriage and, no, I am not a hateful person,” Wooddall said. “I’ve worked with gays that I liked. I don’t understand their lifestyle but I don’t hate or try to judge them! As a Christian, I hate the fact that people judge us as hateful, self-righteous people.”
Wooddall made the comment on the AJC’s Facebook page and later confirmed her remarks in a telephone interview.
Some people aren’t shy at all about voicing their opinions. And when they do, they often reveal the deep-set religious beliefs that still dominate much of Georgia.
The controversy over gay marriage has created rifts at some churches, but the Rev. James Merritt, senior pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, says there is no wavering about it.
“Where I stand is where I believe the Word of God stands,” said Merritt, 62. “I think the Bible is very clear from the beginning that marriage is reserved for a man and a woman.”
Merritt said he prays that elected officials and judges will make the right call on gay marriage.
“I’m not just on a homosexual soapbox,” he said. “If the Bible calls it right, I call it right. If the Bible calls it wrong, I call it wrong.”
While public surveys show that views about same-sex marriage are shifting, strong pockets of resistance remain. These Americans see an array of cultural forces marshalling against their point of view — TV shows, movies and the force of political correctness — all promoting the acceptance of homosexuality. Public opinion may change, they say, but some things are immutable.
“I believe the truth is the truth, and you don’t evolve away from the truth,” said Tanya Ditty, state director of Concerned Women for America of Georgia, a group opposed to same-sex marriage.
‘Not going to stand in their way’
For Jo Patricia Aronstein, agreeing with gay marriage came to be a matter of simple tolerance.
For a long time, Aronstein, a 51-year-old restaurant cashier, never gave much thought to the issue. Basically, she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Even now, she still believes gay marriage goes “against the natural order.” But growing up in New York City, she said she learned to accept “all kinds of belief systems.”
“I’m not going to stand in their way,” she said. “The world doesn’t go according to my way. Not everyone has to be like me.”
Valerie Martin-Lee struggled with the issue for a long time. Over the years, her church had always preached that homosexuality was a sin. Moreover, her husband agreed with that thinking.
But as an African-American woman, she has always believed in equal rights for everyone.
It was President Barack Obama endorsing gay marriage in 2012 that made the difference.
“It bolstered my thinking,” said Martin-Lee, 60, of LaVista Hills. “Now I’m more apt to speak up.”
She has even taken issue with her husband.
“He’s exhausted the arguments on his side,” Martin-Lee added. “I used to be the silent one. Now he’s the silent one.”
‘Undoubtedly my views have changed’
Gay advocates say they’ve noticed the change in public views, and they see the Supreme Court review as a watershed moment.
“More and more people can’t deny anymore that they know gay people,” said Matthew Malok, 67, who married his longtime partner in Connecticut in 2008. “If you like and respect someone, it’s harder to deny them the rights they should rightly have.”
Pew research backs that up. In its 2013 survey, 32 percent of the people who responded said they changed their minds about same-sex marriage because they knew someone — a friend, relative or acquaintance — who was gay.
Georgia has had a few high-profile conversions. Recently, Michael Bowers, a prominent Republican, told the AJC that “undoubtedly my views have changed.”
Thirty years ago, Bowers, then the state attorney general, successfully defended Georgia’s anti-sodomy law. In 1992, he cited the same law as just cause for rescinding a job offer to a lawyer, Robin Shahar, after learning she was a lesbian about to marry another woman.
This past legislative session, however, Bowers was tapped by Georgia Equality, the state’s largest LGBT group, to provide legal analysis on the “religious liberty” bills. Proponents said the bills were intended to limit government intrusion into the religious lives of Georgians, but gay advocates contended they were intended to permit discrimination against gay couples. The bills eventually failed.
Asked about gay marriage this past week, Bowers said he is “probably for it. … I don’t want to see people hurt or discriminated against.”
For many millennials, gay marriage doesn’t appear to be much of a controversy. Support for same-sex marriage has increased dramatically over the past decade among millennials, according to the Pew Research Center.
A recent survey finds 70 percent of millennials are in favor of same-sex marriage. Another element to consider is that support among this group has increased from 51 percent in 2003 to 70 percent, according to a survey conducted in 2013 among 1,501 adults nationwide.
Ask Niema Bracey, 21, a public relations major at Clark Atlanta University.
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Bracey, who has several friends who are gay or lesbian. “I honestly don’t feel it’s any of my business, but the choice of those getting married.”
Some people still struggling
If a ballot question on gay marriage were put before Lashonda Banks, she would probably hesitate, wavering between her religious views and those on civil rights.
She believes gay couples should be afforded all the legal benefits and protections of a married couple. If the ballot question were limited to that, the 37-year-old hairdresser in Sandy Springs said she would vote yes.
But if that legalization meant that gay marriage ceremonies could be held in a church, she would vote no. In her heart, she believes homosexual behavior is blasphemous, and such unions have no place in the house of God.
“I guess I’m kind of straddling the fence,” she said.
Consequently, Banks sees the potential for trouble down the line should the Supreme Court approve gay marriage. Some churches would resist holding ceremonies under their roof, she said.
“They (gay advocates) would say that’s discrimination and file all kinds of lawsuits,” she said.
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