The Aerie
I've heard many people -- including homosexuals involved in committed relationships -- complain that there are better things we could be doing right now than engaging in a battle over gay marriage. They say we have economic issues that need to be addressed, or that the environment is going to pot, or that the world is overpopulated. Gay marriage is distracting, they claim, from attention to these other important issues.
I so disagree.
To begin with, I reject entirely the disempowering argument that if we are not fixing everything, we should not fix anything. We are a great and powerful nation, a cornucopia of human resources: we have the power to save the environment AND assure human rights.
I understand and appreciate the concern that we might NEGLECT other issues -- particularly in an election year -- while addressing gay marriages. But at the same time, the confluence of events leading to the present circumstance is not something that can be controlled or predicted. I doubt many people could have anticipated the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, much less the Donnybrook that
would follow. Nobody could have anticipated the heroic actions of San Francisco's Mayor Newsom or other public officials (a breed, I might add, not usually noted for audacious faith) who have put their jobs on the line for this Twenty-First Century Boston Tea Party.
When such a confluence of events occurs as has this one (a true crossroads or "crisis" moment), it is a time for people and institutions to step forward and become involved. And when our allies risk their careers to advance our common goal, it would be the worst sort of perfidy to stand by and do nothing.
The call to change cannot be scheduled, it can only be answered.
If we are to face future crises, of environment or population or whatever, we will meet them better prepared if we are free men and women than if we are slaves to bigotry and fear.
Meanwhile, I remain confident that the future can take care of itself. I care for my neighbors, here and now, and their children, here and now. The oppression is now. Widowed lesbians turned out onto the streets by their partner's families are happening now. Homosexuals, transsexuals, and bisexuals discriminated against
in housing, work, military participation, and abused and assaulted on the streets are happening now. The ichor of ignorance, fear, fundamentalism and judgementalism oozes down the corridors of power RIGHT NOW, eating away at the stonework of justice.
This is an opportunity not to be neglected, to strike a blow against that bigotry. If we can turn back the most conservative, regressive cultural tide this nation has seen in decades, we can not only secure for our friends, neighbors and loved ones the right to live as full equals in a society such as the world has never before seen, but we can also deal a blow to the smug brokers of power upon their hypocritical thrones.
If we fail, we failed trying. And our posterity will remember this time as a time when people who believed in truth, in love, and in the real meaning of family engaged
in a hopeless quest to thwart the darker times they saw ahead.
These events cannot be scheduled. Their outcomes cannot be assured. But these are times that measure our words by our deeds, and our values by our actions.
And I would rather live today by my own self-respect than face tomorrow's challenges without it.