The Importance of Public Meaning for Political Persuasion

There have been many retrospective analyses written about the marriage-equality movement since the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that made marriages between people of the same sex legal in all 50 states. Most attribute that triumph to a stunningly swift turnaround in public comfort with and approval o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Perspectives on politics 2018-03, Vol.16 (1), p.22-35
Main Author: Woodly, Deva
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activism
Criteria
Decision making
Equal rights
Equality
Gays & lesbians
Meaning
Morality
Narratives
Persuasion
Political activism
Political behavior
Political discourse
Political majority
Political science
Polls & surveys
Preferences
Public opinion
Respondents
Same sex marriage
Sexes
Sexual behavior
Social activism
Special Section: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion
Supreme courts
Values
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Summary:There have been many retrospective analyses written about the marriage-equality movement since the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that made marriages between people of the same sex legal in all 50 states. Most attribute that triumph to a stunningly swift turnaround in public comfort with and approval of same-sex relationships. However, public opinion data indicates that this narrative is inaccurate. In 2015, 51% of General Social Survey respondents declared that they found sexual relationships between people of the same sex to be “wrong” at least “some of the time.” Nevertheless, at the same time, 56% of respondents affirmed that people of the same sex ought to have the legal right to marry. This dissonance suggests that the most common narrative about the success of the movement misses something crucial about how political persuasion happened in this case, as well as the way that political persuasion happens in general. In this article, I show that the massive shift in support for same-sex marriage was likely not the result of large majorities changing their underlying attitudes regarding gay sexual relationships, but was instead the result of activists inserting new criteria for evaluating same-sex marriage into popular political discourse by consistently using resonant arguments. These arguments reframed the political stakes, changed the public meaning of the marriage debate, and altered the decisional context in which people determine their policy preferences.
ISSN:1537-5927
1541-0986
DOI:10.1017/S1537592717003127