Dead issues

[ratatosk_ljbackup]

This post is inspired by looking at an issue of Bay Windows, which is our local GLBT-something newspaper. I noticed that nearly all the articles were about problems that I expect to be resolved, for good, in the next few decades (same-sex marriage, other forms of equality under the law). Then I tried to think of similar political issues that have been resolved with finality during my lifetime, and mostly blanked. I'm sure they exist, and it bugs me that I can't come up with more examples than Lawrence v Texas.[1]

So I'm looking for examples of reasonably major political issues that have been resolved during your memory (or lifetime), across the US as a country (not just in particular states, but not all), and with enough finality that they are exceedingly unlikely to come back (imagine a political equivalent of eradicating smallpox). It can be via a Supreme Court case, legislative activity, social change, whatever -- I'm too pragmatic to care. Feel free to be creative about what counts as a political issue (or a major one), if you think of a neat example.


[1] While the specifics of the holding of that are disputed, I'd say that case forbids criminalizing consensual sex outside of situations where consent is declared unobtainable by statute (e.g. age, kinship, mental incapacity, etc., so long as those categories don't vary based on whether something is heterosexual or not). Lawrence v. Texas is a particularly nice example because I'm also old enough to remember Bowers v. Harwdick coming out, holding that states could criminalize homosexual sodomy. Bowers wasn't necessarily a popular ruling; I remember that comedians thought it was hilarious at the time, and made jokes about how you could "still commit Gomorrah". The issue was definitely not a completely dead one at the time Lawrence v. Texas rolled around, despite states picking away at it one by one in cases based on state constitutions, but I think after Lawrence it is genuinely settled (I think most Supreme Court cases have a much higher susceptibility to later reversal, but it's difficult to imagine circumstances under which Lawrence would get reversed).

Comments

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

* I was about to say "Loving v. Virginia" (interracial marriage), but that decision was actually in 1967, the year before i was born.

* Roe v. Wade is an odd one. I don't think there's much of a chance of abortion simply being declared illegal, but the larger issue of abortion rights has certainly not gone away-- quite the contrary.

* Some Cold War issues. "The spread of Communism," obviously, is no longer a viable concern. Nuclear proliferation is very much an active issue (hello, Iran), but in the sense of US vs. USSR, it's pretty much a non-issue.

* Nuclear power? I had thought that no new nuclear power plants had been built (well, started being built) since the 1970s, after all the anti-nuclear activism at the time, but it turns out that in 2010 Obama made an announcement for a new plant in Georgia. Still, I think it's fair to say that the nature of the dialogue has been forever altered.

* There are other cases where the issue as originally defined has gone away, but the issue then gets redefined and so continues as a concern. An obvious example-- but one that isn't "within my lifetime"-- is "poverty." No one in the United States is poor by 1930s standards, and probably not by 1960 standards, but "poverty" in some form goes on, because the concept has been redefined.
Basically, when a group organizes and "wins," they usually don't just declare victory and disband, they (rightly or wrongly) redefine their issue(s) to remain relevant. The March of Dimes is still around, even though polio, their original cause, has long since been conquered.
Another example might be "women's opportunities in higher education"-- women have gone from being clearly discriminated against at all levels, to Title IX and women making up the majority of all college and graduate students except in certain programs (engineering, etc.).

[Note: ultimatepsi helped with this brainstorming.]

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Loving would have counted if you were one year older, definitely -- it's probably the next best example after Lawrence. The spread of communism sounds right to me, too. I'm unconvinced on nuclear power and poverty.

As to where women's opportunities were in 1967, I'll take your word for it, since I genuinely don't know.

[squirrelitude]

"No one in the United States is poor by 1930s standards"

Wait, what? This can't be right.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would interpret that as "No one in the United States who is poor by 1930s standards is socially visible in 2012."

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you count these as "reasonably major," but the controversies over leaded gasoline, catalytic converters, and smoking in public places are all pretty well settled. So is the one about health insurance coverage including mental health treatment. (There are other controversies about health insurance, but not that one.)

Something else that's changed is the whole concept of equal pay for women. Now, we talk about the problem of women getting paid less, on average...because they get promoted less, because they tend to get hired for lower-status and lower-paying jobs than similarly-qualified men. That's a different problem than my mother experienced a few years before I was born. She worked in a school district that straightforwardly paid new 6th grade teachers differently based on gender.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Leaded gas is a great example! But I don't think smoking in public places is at all settled. The others I won't pretend to know enough to evaluate.

[shadow.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. The communist question is probably the biggest to be settled in my lifetime. The ADA is another one, maybe? I'm also hoping the "safe harbor" ISP-not-liable provisions of the CDA aren't going to be reopened, which feels major to me at least, but may not to most people.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

The spread of communism counts. I wish the safe harbor provisions were settled, because they are pretty much necessary for most of the Internet to be viable, but I don't think they're particularly near to "settled questions" the way I had in mind.