Bob CollinsBy the time the U.S. Supreme Court gets around to deciding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, it may be overtaken by events.
This map from the Washington Post today is an astounding visualization of just how quickly same-sex marriage has been accepted in the country.
Seven in 10 Americans now live in states where same-sex marriage is legal, the Post says.
That number, along with the map at the top of the post, shows the staggering shift that has occurred on the issue in a relatively short time period. Meanwhile, a poll last year found that a majority of Americans (59 percent) supported same-sex marriage. (Similar numbers were also reported by the Pew Research Center and Gallup last year).
Of course, when the Supreme Court acted in 2013, it did not conclusively settle the question of whether same-sex marriage must be legal in all states, so attorneys and activists have been pushing to have the court consider this question. As Barnes explains here, justices will meet this week to consider whether to take up the issue, something they passed up last fall. Their decision could determine whether the map above, showing the state of same-sex marriage at the beginning of 2015, looks dramatically different by the end of this year.
The U.S. Supreme Court may announce on Friday whether it would accept a case challenging same-sex marriage.
