So - in a more lucid moment on my trip, as I wasn't being bombarded by the media and my thoughts and outrage and whatever else flits through my brain like so many fire-flies turning my attention this way and that...
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What was I saying...
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Oh yeah..
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Any way, here is why gay marriage will happen so much faster than "gay rights" in general happened. And why it is the right battle for us homos.
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Look, any other time you trot out gay rights (in housing or employment or whatever) some anti-gay person can easily pick up a picture of the gay parade or some loud obnoxious boy going off and say to the public, "Really? Do you want this type of promiscuous predator around you and your family?"
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But the request for marriage is exactly antithetical to that argument. Here the request is the right to join the mainstream. The poster folk for same sex marriage are EXACTLY what "the public" want gays to be. Non-threatening and normal.
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Within the gay community there was a HUGE contention that homos should go for incremental rights (employment, housing non-discrimination) and gay marriage was too threatening even to discuss for generations. During Clinton's administration there was a lot of anger at the Massachusetts lawsuit and the thought it would lead to a huge backlash. Which it did. The gay marriage argument undoubtedly helped Bush and the Republicans in the 1990s-2000s.
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But as the idea becomes less threatening - the public has become (in the main) blase about it. Turns out (through dumb luck) the fight for gay marriage was exactly the right fight.
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The fight for gay marriage comes as younger gays and lesbians reject separate lives and bars anyway. The integration of homos into mainstream is happening / has fully happened in the younger generations. This social change is odd for many older gay people used to living in gay communities with gay bars - and is odd for many older straight people not used to having gays around them. And there are still plenty of clashes at the margins of "traditional" gathering spots. Some gays get really nasty looks (and more) at some bars and some gay bars object to bachelorette parties, but generally the integration has come pretty easily.
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Just some nice random thoughts from the old married homo.