rapid gay marriage shift in the U.S.

This is circulating around Facebook today– Andrew Sullivan quoting a Republican inside memo advising the Party that the U.S. public has really flipped around on the issue of gay marriage. HERE.

But what I find to be the most remarkable point of the memo is not the same as the ones that Sullivan talks about. It’s the following passage from the Republican pollster:

“As more people have become aware of friends and family members who are gay, attitudes have begun to shift at an accelerated pace. This is not about a generational shift in attitudes, this is about people changing their thinking as they recognize their friends and family members who are gay or lesbian.”

In particular, I am fascinated by the phrase “this is not about a generational shift in attitudes.” Normally, we think of generational shifts as the ultimate source of changing standards of normalcy, as in Max Planck’s famous statement (which I love) that you can’t persuade people, you just have to wait for the older generation to die out.

It’s a rather fascinating sociological phenomenon when, by contrast, the American public simply does an about-face and decides “on second thought, it actually makes sense to allow gay marriage.”

Are there other recent cases like this? I’ve read, though I wasn’t conscious at the time, that it worked like this with the Vietnam War as well– that the turn against the war among the American public was fairly rapid and cut off across many different demographic groups.