In August 1953, officials of the U.S Post Office delayed delivery of that month’s issue of ONE magazine, with the cover story “Homosexual Marriage?”, for three weeks while they tried to determine whether its contents were obscene.
and
In June 1971, members of the Gay Activists Alliance demanded marriage rights for same-sex couples at New York City’s Marriage License Bureau.
and
The next year [sc. 1973], the National Coalition of Gay Organizations called for the repeal of all statutes limiting marriage to different-sex couples and for extending the legal benefits of marriage to all cohabiting couples.
On Wikipedia’s timeline of same-sex marriage (which incidentally doesn’t mention Sullivan’s article) we find that in 1975 some same-sex marriage licences were actually issued in Colorado! (But they got blocked.)
Perhaps Sullivan was the first major conservative pundit to argue for same-sex marriage in the US, or something like that. Good for him! But he wasn’t the first person to champion it, not by a long way.
I acknowledge others were talking about it earlier, but I think “first major conservative pundit” is an understatement. Tyler Cowen called Sullivan the most influential public intellectual of the past 20 years, largely due to the influence he had on gay marriage.
The things you quote don’t claim he was first, they just say he was early (which, indeed, he was; I wasn’t disputing that).
It does indeed appear that Johann Hari says that in 1989 he wrote the “first major article” in the US arguing for same-sex marriage. But, for instance, in the Wikipedia article about the history of same-sex marriage in the US we find:
and
and
On Wikipedia’s timeline of same-sex marriage (which incidentally doesn’t mention Sullivan’s article) we find that in 1975 some same-sex marriage licences were actually issued in Colorado! (But they got blocked.)
Perhaps Sullivan was the first major conservative pundit to argue for same-sex marriage in the US, or something like that. Good for him! But he wasn’t the first person to champion it, not by a long way.
I acknowledge others were talking about it earlier, but I think “first major conservative pundit” is an understatement. Tyler Cowen called Sullivan the most influential public intellectual of the past 20 years, largely due to the influence he had on gay marriage.