Today, gay people of a certain age may feel as
though they had stepped out of a lavender time machine. That’s the
sensation that hit me when I watched the young man in Tempe shout down a
homophobe in the name of the President-elect. Gay marriage is legal in
six states and in Washington, D.C. Gays can serve in the military
without hiding their sexuality. We’ve seen openly gay judges,
congresspeople, mayors (including a four-term mayor of Tempe), movie
stars, and talk-show hosts. Gay film and TV characters are almost
annoyingly ubiquitous. The Supreme Court, which finally annulled sodomy
laws in 2003, is set to begin examining the marriage issue. And the 2012
campaign has shown that Republicans no longer see the gays as a
reliable wedge issue: although Mitt Romney opposes same-sex marriage, he
has barely mentioned it this fall. If thirty-two people were to die
today in a mass murder at a gay bar, both Obama and Romney would
presumably express sympathy for the victims—more than any official in
New Orleans did when, back in 1973, an arsonist set fire to the Upstairs
Lounge.
[---]
Three-dimensional people are more persuasive than two-dimensional ones, as Biden surely knows. In the end, the big change likely came about because, each year, a few thousand more gay people make the awkward announcement to their families and friends, supplanting images from the folklore of disgust. My primary political moment happened when I wrote long, lugubrious letters to my closest friends, finally revealing the rest of me.
In one, I came out in a footnote on the seventh page, amid pompous but heartfelt quotations from Wallace Stevens: “The greatest poverty is not to live / In a physical world, to feel that one’s desire / Is too difficult to tell from despair.” Harvey Milk always said that this was how the revolution would happen: one lonely kid at a time.
- More Here on the history of this much needed Moral Progress
[---]
Three-dimensional people are more persuasive than two-dimensional ones, as Biden surely knows. In the end, the big change likely came about because, each year, a few thousand more gay people make the awkward announcement to their families and friends, supplanting images from the folklore of disgust. My primary political moment happened when I wrote long, lugubrious letters to my closest friends, finally revealing the rest of me.
In one, I came out in a footnote on the seventh page, amid pompous but heartfelt quotations from Wallace Stevens: “The greatest poverty is not to live / In a physical world, to feel that one’s desire / Is too difficult to tell from despair.” Harvey Milk always said that this was how the revolution would happen: one lonely kid at a time.
- More Here on the history of this much needed Moral Progress
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