A Polite Rebuttal

Yesterday was a landmark day for California gays. A nationwide community quietly smiled with the news, even those living in red states with no soon possibility of receiving the same dignity. Here's what one of Andrew Sullivan's readers wrote:

I live in Texas. Rights for gay folks around here are sometimes hard to discern. Daring to hope for a future of equal marriage rights often just feels futile. So you just tuck that precious hope in the darkest corner of your heart and cover it with the thickest of armor. Because in the absence of the dignity of equality, it’s all you have. And they can’t have it.

Today, I celebrated with my Californian brothers and sisters from a thousand miles away. I saw their faces, I read their stories and I wept with them. And I dared to hope for myself and my fellow Texans, just a little. My little hope has outgrown its dusty confines.

I don’t think I’ll need that armor ever again.

Today, Sully wrote a piece on St. Barack's position on full marriage rights:

I should add that Obama's position strikes me as transparently flimsy. His only defense of his support for full marriage rights without the m-word is a function, in his description, of comfort and religion. But he is very comfortable around gay people, gay couples and our families. And his own church actually favors equal marriage rights for gay couples - and its inclusion of gay people was obviously a reason why TUCC was attractive to Obama. Marriage is the one issue where Obama is still politically afraid, intellectually vacuous, and a moral coward.

This is the civil rights movement of our time. Whatever happened to the fierce urgency of now?


While Barack's stance on marriage rights is nowhere near what any gay individual feels as equal, atleast he's engaging them.

See here, here, and....oh, yeh....here.

He gets it. Give him a break.

After eights years of GOP fear-based campaigning, it's gonna take a while for those "hard working" folks in West Virinia, South Dakota, etc. to switch back to listen-and-judge-for-yourself mode.

It's also gonna take a while to carefully craft legislation giving all Americans their inalienable rights, building the necessary firewalls to prevent it from being a house built on sand.

In the words of the great Dr. Leo Marvin: Baby steps.