Originally published on the CGS blog on July 17, 2013.
Last month, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and paved the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California. Millions of people across the United States celebrated a victory for equality and progressivism. The decisions are historic and mark a new chapter in the fight to wrestle modernity from the hands of religious conservatives. 31 years ago it was legal to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals in all 50 states; 12 years ago the American Medical Association thought homosexuality was a disease; and nine years ago same-sex marriage was illegal no matter where people lived.
Now, same-sex marriage is legal in 12 states (as well as the District of Columbia) and six states allow civil unions. The momentum is unquestionably on the side of equality and the long arc of the moral universe does seem to be bending toward justice. This, as regressive legislatures and governors overturn racial protections and restrict access to abortion centers. National gay rights advocates largely weathered the storm of 2010 and 2012 when a series of Tea Party candidates swept to victory in the South and Midwest.
Many people attribute the success to the popularization of the idea of being gay. The popular 1990’s television show “Will and Grace” is seen as launching the gay media revolution carried on by Glee, Modern Family, and others. But there is a broader, more universal principle the gay rights movement can teach all of us – norms are powerful and norm diffusion is an essential part of social and political change.
In sociology, a norm is a group-held belief about how members should act in a given context. There are written and unwritten norms, conformative and subversive norms, but all norms have the potential to impact a community in major ways. The gay rights movement is a prime example of how changing a norm changes social relations and policy. Television shows, magazines, litigation, public demonstrations, and other media taught resistant Americans that being gay was normal and gay rights should be protected by the Constitution.
There are many norms in foreign policy as well – colonization, decolonization, capitalism, national sovereignty, reciprocity, mutual recognition, and so on, but perhaps the most interesting contemporary example is the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). RtoP began as an internationally supported doctrine in the early 2000s that emerged from a yearning to prevent large-scale conflicts that ravaged civilians in the twentieth century. The basic tenants of RtoP state that the international community has responsibilities to prevent conflict, respond to outbreaks of violence, and rebuild after conflict ends. The doctrine is slowly evolving into a norm, with varying degrees of success, particularly among the G8 countries. President Obama invoked RtoP before he intervened in Libya, as an example.
Unfortunately, RtoP increasingly became a doctrine for liberal interventionists who adopted militaristic language. The responsibility to prevent and rebuild are often tossed aside as insignificant caveats. However, RtoP, coupled with a recognition of the power of norm diffusion, opens space for advocates interested in promoting non-violence. The language of civilian protection is in the vernacular because of RtoP, among other things, and advocates less interested in military intervention and more interested in sustainable conflict prevention can use that language to their advantage. Framing international politics in structuralist or critical post-modernist terms rather than realist ones is a start. The further we move away from outdated geopolitical lenses and closer we move toward a compassionate mutualism lens, the better. Promoting a norm of non-violent foreign policy-making has the potential to impact the electorate and, ultimately, decision-makers that control the military- and spy-industrial complexes.
At every turn the gay rights movement makes equality sound more appealing than hate. Similarly, non-violence advocates must always make peace sound more appealing than war.
