Malcolm Gladwell on gay marriage acceptance

Larry: Why do things change so quickly now? For example, it took blacks forever and they're still working on getting equal treatment but gay marriage is the law.

Malcolm: Yeah.

Larry: And that seems swift. How did that happen so fast?

Malcolm: The gay marriage story is an incredibly unusual one because you would have thought that of all of the social issues facing America that would be one that we would wrestle with as long as abortion, right? But it turns out, no, it sort of went away and we're still fighting about abortion. I think maybe it's a couple of things. One is that gays and lesbians wanting to join the rest of society, right? To do that they want to do the same thing that the rest of society has been doing for a millennia.

Larry: They don't want to be apart.

Malcolm: And that at the end of the day, is good news. It ought - you know, people finally woke up to say wait a minute that's a fantastic thing and a beautiful thing. So maybe that's a difference it seemed like it was a really threatening challenging issue and then people thought about it for about five minutes and they realized, actually, no it's very life affirming.