Congratulations to you and yours...would that we were seeing celebrations like yours on land in all parts of this country...


"Mr. Bush, you do not own this country!" -- Keith Olbermann, 1/2/07

Remember!  Send us pictures, we need pictures!

An untypical Negro

http://thisblksistaspage.wordpress.com

Speaking from experience.

Good luck and congratulations.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

If someone had given me that answer about "company policy", I would have thanked them very much...then taken my business to another company. But I guess 19 years ago there weren't that many options... :|

"Mr. Bush, you do not own this country!" -- Keith Olbermann, 1/2/07

'Nuff said...


"Mr. Bush, you do not own this country!" -- Keith Olbermann, 1/2/07

First of all, it was not "introduced" at "this particular moment." I've been in D.C. for almost 13 years. I came here in 1994 to work for the Human Rights Campaign. The marriage issue was "introduced" back then, when couples in Hawaii filed a suit in 1990. The timeline of the Hawaii case is here. There's more on the 1993 rulings here.

I posted about this on my blog a while back. At that time, in 1994, almost no gay organization wanted to touch the marriage issue. Because no matter how you looked at the numbers it was not a winning issue. But the push for it came from the grassroots, from the community, from the bottom up; from people who, in the course of their day-to-day lives, became aware of how few rights they had and even fewer protections.

I could do an entire post (and have on my blog) about what happens to our families in the absence of marriage equality. I've done post after post about it on my blog. I do it for one reason. Because hearing those stories makes a difference.

Laurel Hester's story is one example, actually, of how bloggers made a difference in publicizing a story that wouldn't have been heard outside of her hometown. But when people heard her story, even if they didn't necessarily agree with same-sex marriage, the discrimination she experience outraged their sense of morality.

As more people hear these stories, more people have the same reaction. Now, we're at a point where a majority of people support legal rights for same-sex couples. And, while a majority still oppose legal same-sex marriage, opposition to marriage equality has dropped by 12 points since 2004. As for the future, research suggests that young people are much more supportive of marriage equality than their elders.

I think there's at least one reason why, and I wrote about it last summer.

And how did this happen? As noted in their column, it's because people like Steve and Cokie Roberts have gay and lesbian friends they care about, because couples like Kevin and Grant came out to them and shared their lives with them. It happens because people like Steve and Cokie will live next door to gay couples, go to the same churches, and send their kids to the same schools as kids with gay parents. It happens because those same kids will have gay classmates who come out to them and/or they'll see realistic portrayals of gay people in the media, to the point where it becomes no big deal to them; like the people who didn't feel it necessary to even mention that one of the couples celebrated at the party would be a gay couple.

It happens because we -- gay & lesbian people, and our families -- continue to "do our job" of just living our lives openly and honestly. You see us go about our every day lives month after month, year after year, all while noticing that your own marriage hasn't crumbled as a result (the oceans haven't boiled, the mountains haven't disintegrated, the earth hasn't spun off its axis and into the sun, etc.) and we just don't seem that interesting anymore. In ten years, we'll be even less interesting.

That's the reason I continue to tell these stories. To look out our families from the outside in, you wouldn't necessarily think we lack much compared to other families. But that's because the rights and protections we lack don't come into play until moments of crisis -- the illness or death of a spouse, the illness of a child, etc. -- and the consequences for lacking them play out behind the closed doors of hospitals, court rooms, funeral homes, etc., where almost no one sees that part of the story. When they do, some of them learn things they didn't know before, and a few more minds are changed.

Over and over again in the netroots when it comes to gay issues I've been told that we can't expect our political leaders to lead on our issues, at least not until we make it "safe" for them to do so, because they're not "majority" issues. Our job, I'm told, is to educate the public and shift public opinion, so that our "leaders" can safely speak what are supposedly their values: fairness, equality, inclusiveness, etc.

Telling these stories is part of that job. I've stopped asking or even hoping that Democratic leadership will actually lead on issues of equality. I don't expect them to make it a major campaign issue. I've even stopped hoping that they will at least stand and speak against discrimination when the issue is brought up, instead of dodging it.

I've stopped even expecting them to show up on this issue. But I'll continue to show up. I'll show up on health care. I show up on choice. I'll show up on economic inequality. I'll show up on poverty. I'll show up on education. I'll show up on the environment. I'll show up on foreign policy. I'll show up and lend my voice, my support, and my efforts because progressive positions on those issues are part of my values. I'll do that work, because every one of those issues effects not just me, but my community, my family, friends, people I care about, and people I don't even know but am connected to by virtue of being a human being.

I'll show up for all of the above, and not even expect anyone to show up when the issue is equality for families like mine. I'll show up on that issue because I have to, even if no one else does. So, please, don't ask me not to do that work by not speaking up about it.

I can let go of any hope of support or leadership from Democratic leadership. But I can't keep quiet about it, because experience shows that speaking up about it makes a difference. I'll accept that I can't expect Democratic leadership to make a difference on the issue.

But don't ask me not to make a difference.

Must have clicked the wrong spot.

We are all captives of the pictures in our heads -- our belief that the world which we have experienced is the world that really exists. -- Walter Lippman