Some Words of Clarification

It occurs to me, reflecting on my last post about SSM, that there are two major strands to this debate on which I touched, but I never really elucidated them.

The first, of course, is the legal aspect, which is pretty much even at this point: we are winning in the courts, they are winning in the voting booths. Changing that, I think, depends on turning around the "hearts and minds" aspect.

The right wing theocrats, through scare tactics based on half-truths, distortions, constant references to dicredited "research," and in some cases outright lies, has captured the public mind on the issue of same-sex marriage. Their tactics include utterances such as "we have evidence that gay men adopt children to sexually abuse them" (someone actually said this; if they have such evidence at all, it comes from specious sources such as Paul Cameron; if not, they likely made it up from what "everyone knows" -- gay men are all pedophiles, which is pretty easily debunked -- just ask the FBI); the "activist judges" mantra, which I've dealt with; "it's been 'proven' that children need a mother and father" (no -- they extrapolate conclusions based on comparative studies of single-parent and two parent households and try to pretend that they are applicable to gay-parent/ straight-parent households, which they are not);

There are more and more examples of same-sex families living their lives -- check out the Gay Rights Forum at the NYT "Readers' Opinions" section online -- lots of people raising children there who are worried about things like mortgages, getting the kids off to school in the morning, dance lessons, after-school activities: real radical. These are the stories that would make the difference, and the press isn't really very interested. I wonder how much Donald Wildmon is paying them.

And the gay leadership is not capitalizing on these stories. Something should be appearing in local paper every week -- forget NYT and WaPo (although the Boston Globe did a terrific series a while back -- but once every ten years just isn't enough). Something should be in the Podunk Union-Clarion or some such. There's your real grassroots effort.

And, just to add a story to the "hearts and minds" mix, I was talking with a young man of my acquaintance just before his boyfriend moved in, and it's a conversation I wish could have been viewed by all those who are dubious about same-sex marriage or gay rights in general. They'd been dating for a while, and were spending a lot of time in each other's apartments, but they wanted to save up their money and get a place together in about a year, maybe less, so they were moving into a very small studio together. (J has been out of work for a while, and his boyfriend has been helping him out, but it's not been easy; happily, he's just gotten a new job.) J was nervous about it, but hopeful: they really are in love. I wish his grin was on billboards -- it's almost impossible to describe the hope and nerves and even a little bit of determination in that face at that moment. They are, by the way, a charming couple -- both very nice guys without a mean bone in their bodies. They may or may not be thinking about marriage -- I think they would think it's too soon to talk about that, although we haven't discussed it. They seem to think, though, that there's some more courtship needed before they can really call it a relationship. But I don't see any reason why marriage shouldn't be an option for them.