I’m generally not in favor of orthodoxy unless it’s an orthodoxy that we can all get behind, like equal rights, democracy and civil liberties.

In the electronic edition of Sunday’s New York Times, Frank Bruni wrote an article describing the new “Gay Orthodoxy.” As he put it, “in a great many circles, endorsement of same-sex marriage has rather suddenly become nonnegotiable. Expected. Assumed. Proof of a baseline level of enlightenment and humanity. Akin to the understanding that all people, regardless of race or color, warrant the same rights and respect.”

This incredibly fast (and positive) change in the zeitgeist around the issue of same-sex marriage is remarkable. I believe that there are so many mutually reinforcing positive trends that this kind of blink-and-you-missed-it progress will be more and more common.