It is often said that politics is downstream from culture. In the 1990s, various films (Philadelphia, Love! Valour! Compassion!, etc), and TV shows (Ellen, Will & Grace) portrayed homosexuals in a sympathetic and unthreatening way. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in a case called Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Constitution guarantees the right of gay and lesbian same-sex couples to marry. No one would argue that any particular cultural product, by itself, helped bring legal same-sex marriage to all fifty American states. But it seems likely that there is some connection between the enormous popularity of, say, Will & Grace, which concluded its original run in 2006, and the country’s wider acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships. When he was Vice President, Joe Biden noted, with characteristic overstatement, that the program “probably did more to educate the American public” about the lives of gay and lesbian people “than almost anything anybody has ever done so far.” And, according to Wikipedia: “In 2014, the
WHEN POP CULTURE TRIED TO FIGHT GUN VIOLENCE
WHEN POP CULTURE TRIED TO FIGHT GUN VIOLENCE
WHEN POP CULTURE TRIED TO FIGHT GUN VIOLENCE
It is often said that politics is downstream from culture. In the 1990s, various films (Philadelphia, Love! Valour! Compassion!, etc), and TV shows (Ellen, Will & Grace) portrayed homosexuals in a sympathetic and unthreatening way. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in a case called Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Constitution guarantees the right of gay and lesbian same-sex couples to marry. No one would argue that any particular cultural product, by itself, helped bring legal same-sex marriage to all fifty American states. But it seems likely that there is some connection between the enormous popularity of, say, Will & Grace, which concluded its original run in 2006, and the country’s wider acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships. When he was Vice President, Joe Biden noted, with characteristic overstatement, that the program “probably did more to educate the American public” about the lives of gay and lesbian people “than almost anything anybody has ever done so far.” And, according to Wikipedia: “In 2014, the