Last week’s Supreme Court decision all but ended the debate about the legality of gay marriage in America. Yet there is ample reason to think it has arrived at the beginning of another trend: a rise in the importance some voters attach to cultural issues in the 2016 presidential campaign.
As has been widely noted, the decision capped off a stunningly quick and broad shift in public acceptance of gay marriage.
But that acceptance is hardly universal. More broadly, and perhaps more important politically, the ruling by a deeply and bitterly divided court comes amid evidence that some Americans already were viewing with growing concern what they see as a broad slide in moral standards. CONT.
Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal