The trouble with most prognosticators, blathering on about most of politics and pop culture these days, is that they never see past the latest poll or the most recent event. No matter how strongly the public speaks its collective mind, it is only speaking today's mind, not tomorrows. The question with really scary issues like gay marriage is how they will feel once the fear wears off: resigned and/or accepting, or radicalized to stomp the offenders out?
As usual, the best early take on the San Francisco gay marriages came late last week from Salon's Managing Editor Joan Walsh, who this time has the benefit of living there:
And the debate is sure to rage on: Will San Francisco's Winter of Love make it easier for Republicans to hold onto the White House next November?
No one knows for sure, but I don't think so. I feel like I have to confess upfront that my analytical skills have been warped by watching all of these weddings. You can't imagine what it's like from a distance. Straight or gay, visitors get teary when they walk inside City Hall, where the meaning of what Newsom did is huge and palpable. It's always struck me as vaguely homophobic, the insistence on how "normal" these couples are, but that really is what hits you in person. Sure, there are drag queens in the line waiting for marriage licenses, and plenty of old-fashioned flannel-shirted lesbians. But there are also 50-something men in bad suits and women in Prada; there are women in wheelchairs and interracial couples; and there are children everywhere, kids doing homework sitting on the floor as they wait for their parents' turn to get married. These are families already, and once you see them you know: There's really no going back.
No going back. I think she may have nailed it.
At first I thought her proximity to all the marriages might be a liability, but in this case, it looks more like an early glimpse. The more gay people actually get married--either officially in San Francisco or upstate New York, or Massachusetts, or wherever else the government recognizes them, or in all the other unsanctioned services already going on around the country that gayboys are likely to quit being so damned quiet about--the likely every person on every street corner will come to know a gay married couple. Exactly the way most of the population has come to discover a gay friend or relative or three the past two decades, as more and more of us quit hiding who we were.
That simple recognition of our presence in your lives is what changed your opinions on us. It's on the much larger question of acceptance and embracing of gayguys and gaygirls where we really have seen that there's really no going back. We're here, you know we're queer, and you're already used to it. And more and more--especially the younger half of the population, which will correspond to the living population a few more decades down the road--you really couldn't care less.
Last summer I shuddered about the marriage issue breaking so soon with the impending Massachusetts decision. The further this goes, the more I think I was just chicken. Unecessarily chicken.
Sure, more time would have helped, but this could be the kick in the ass we all needed. In that piece last summer, I bemoaned the invisibility of married gay couples in the media, and pleaded with them to quit being so chicken about showing us. Not too likely to happen on its own. This should get some of them cranking out new images of us. It's finally topical, but the new accounts have also broken the taboo. Now we're actually recognized out in the culture, the little weenies at the networks and the studios won't have to feel like radicals depicting us.
It's not just the media, though, the whole freaking country--which in our case translates to the whole freaking world, to a lesser extent--is suddenly getting used to the idea.
They may not like it, but they are getting used to it.
It's looking like they may take us to the mat over a constitutional amendment--and I think people writing that off as impossible are incredibily naive; it may not happen, but it very well could happen--but if we can survive that, we will have come out of this much stronger.
We have probably already won on civil unions. That statement would have sounded ridiculous just two to three years ago. Right back there at the turn of the century, we would have been thrilled to see the civil unions realized in our lifetime. Now even Marilyn Musgrave refused to exclude them in her constitutional amendment currently before Congress, because she said it would be impossible to pass it. That's still a long ways from them actually coming into existence all across the country, but it's a good indication of where we'll end up. We're going to get at least that much.
And a lot of gays I talk to would be perfectly satisfied with that, but I think they're just plain out of their minds. They say if we can have an exact duplicate of marriage--eventually, once federal rights like social security and tax status are added--with these civil unioins, and the only hitch is we have to call it something different, what's the big deal with that? What difference does it make?
I'm hearing a whole lot of that from homos and I can barely believe my ears.
Separate but equal--what's wrong with that?
Good God. We can have something separate but equal, we just can't call our marriages marriage because ours are dirty and would defile the name of yours?
Have we not been through this once already? I supposed we can also have a perfectly good water fountain every bit as good as yours too. And youl'll put it up right next to yours so we can get to it just as easily, how could we possibly have a problem with that? And we better stay out of your swimming pools, by the way, you won't want us polluting them with all our dirty negrosity, I mean homosexuality.
They tried the very same con with the blacks 40 years ago, and boy did those whiteboys cling to the notion there was nothing wrong with what they were proposing, but even they see how ridiculous it looks from a distance. Yet here they go again with the same tired idea for us this time. And half our own self-loathing population is ready to lap it up. Sure, go ahead, brand me as unworthy and inferior, I'll praise the lord for the right to see my husband in the hospital.
Kiss my ass. I don't even have a husband on the horizon and I'm appalled at that proposition.
It's amazing how quickly all our thinking can change on this issue in such a short time once the ball gets rolling. Last summer I was first chicken about it (at the above link), then kind of dreamy about the prospect a month later. Right now I seem to be in the angry phase.
And why shouldn't I? I'm sick of being labelled inferior. And exhilarated to see our moment finally to stand up for ourselves. Exhilarated to read this conclusion to the wonderful piece by Joan Walsh, my most trusted sage:
But it's too early to know how Newsom's move will play politically, or even legally. It's still possible the courts will say he's wrong and stop the weddings. In the meantime, San Franciscans can be proud of what's going on in City Hall. I walked away last week unexpectedly happy, knowing without a doubt: This is what history looks like. This is what it feels like to do the right thing.
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
