Crossing the aisle

This effort was indicative of widespread national trends. Of our generation, the Millenials — those born between 1981 and the present — 63 percent support gay marriage. Of Generation X — those born between 1965 and 1980 — 51 percent support gay marriage. The generations that support gay marriage by smaller margins are dying out. The religiously unaffiliated have a much higher tendency to support gay marriage, and they do so by a ratio of more than 3:1 (77 percent). According to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the number of religiously unaffiliated is also on the rise. The shift in public opinion is accelerating, and the political student groups at Penn and Columbia are cooperating and adapting accordingly.

It is heartening to see that other universities have taken the leap in coming together over issues relevant to changing national trends. Now it is time for Princeton to join them. Princeton’s well-known status as a politically apathetic campus allows it to be a potentially fertile breeding ground for cross-party cooperation and discussion of important issues. Princeton, like her Ivy League sisters, is also home to future national leaders, political and otherwise. I hope that, going forward, the whole of Princeton takes lessons from our peers in New York City and Philadelphia. The Whig-Cliosophic Society, in many ways, exhibits this trend of coming together. Though partisanship is fodder for heated debate, there are many events that have folks with different viewpoints spending time together, as was the case for the recent presidential election viewing party.

It might be argued that consensus on a social issue like gay marriage does not necessarily speak to a trend of future consensus on other issues. In fact, it seems to me unlikely that the two parties will ever come together over other social issues such as abortion, and certainly not over economic issues, such as taxes, spending and the growing deficit. The issue of gay marriage is unique in its likeness to the civil rights movements of the past. History has stood testament to the fall of various exclusions, and the expansion of gay rights has progressed enough that it is tough to imagine significant regression. Nonetheless, agreement on gay marriage is at least a step in the right direction, toward compromise on those other issues.

The future political leadership has taken the public step to announce support from both major parties, and we can hope that this reflects a move toward political consensus to come in the next few decades. The partisan bickering has become so bad in recent years that some posit there is hardly a shared foundation from which to begin debate. Yet the widespread, bipartisan support for gay marriage is certainly proof to the contrary. At the college level, there appears to be hope for a future not quite so bleak.

Aaron Applbaum is a Wilson School major from Oakland, Calif. He can be reached at applbaum@princeton.edu.