The Big Gay Shrug

Here's a fun
thing to do to calm your frazzled, saddened nerves in the wake of the
CA Supreme Court's very unfortunate, but also merely annoying and
karmically fleeting Proposition 8 decision:

Head on down to your local high school -- hell, make it a junior
high or even an elementary -- and take yourself an informal survey. Ask
the various wary, bepimpled youth of Generation Tweet what they think
about those scary gay people getting married.

Ask them, in your most panicky, alarmist, Mormonified voice:
Aren't they horrified at the very idea? Aren't they shocked at the very
thought of two people in love having their union officially recognized
and validated by the state?

Don't they know the musty ol' Bible mutters some barely
coherent, mistranslated silliness about it in a single word or two
written 1,500 years ago in a long dead language by acidic church elders
with powermad political agendas and violently repressed libidos who
nevertheless wish to instruct us all how to live and love and screw?

Please note the response. Please observe how the kids merely
look at you as though you're more than a little bit deranged and
prehistoric, so out of touch you might as well be Dick Cheney talking
up the diesel-powered rectal thermometers he so loved back in World War
I.

Watch carefully as they sigh and roll their eyes, then whip out
their Nokias to text their friends about how this creepy elder just
tried to convince them that the harmless, yawningly commonplace
homosexuality currently saturating the popular culture all around them,
from fashion to Facebook, movies to "American Idol," is not only wrong,
but so wrong that the law should ban it forever because... well, no one
really seems to know exactly why.

Did you see it? That big, sighing shrug of what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you, combined with lots of who-the-hell-cares? Because that's the reaction to note most of all.

Here is what it tells you: Gay marriage is a foregone
conclusion. It's a done deal. It's just a matter of time. For the next
generation in particular, equal rights for gays is not even a question
or a serious issue, much less a sinful hysterical conundrum that can
only be answered by terrified Mormons and confused old people and inane
referendums funded by same. It's just obvious, inevitable, a given.

Let us hereby be reminded, before sadness and frustration
overwhelm once more: Proposition 8 and its ilk are merely the last,
fitful gasps of a long-dying ideology, markers of a certain kind of
sad, conservative desperation. They are the final clawings and
scrapings of a reactionary worldview that attempts to outlaw and punish
all it cannot, will not understand. Same as it ever was, really.

The pattern is as old as fear itself. Remember, only rarely does
true progress appear as a single, momentous, Obama-like shift that
reverberates across the planet and changes everything in an instant.
Most frequently it comes in fits and starts and hiccups, small lurches
and hard-fought battles shot through with little spitballs of hate and
intolerance and heaps of misunderstanding. You know, just like now.

Evidence? Plenty. Just look at the numbers: Support for gay
marriage is now the highest it's been in American history, somewhere
between 42 and 48 percent nationwide. Just a few decades ago, support
was down in the 20s. It's been rising steadily ever since, never once
regressing.

Or, flip that data around. According to FiveThirtyEight, marriage bans like California's are losing support at a rate of about two percent a year. According to that model, more than half of U.S. states will vote against
bans like the contemptible Prop 8 as soon as 2012, if not sooner. By
2024, even miserably homophobic joints like Alabama and Mississippi
will be flying the rainbow flag.

You could say, then, that we are, right this minute, at the
tipping point. You could say that very soon indeed -- sooner than many
people expect, in fact -- we will all look back on this inane gay
marriage hysteria and wonder, what the hell was that all about? What
the hell were we thinking? And by the way, isn't President Obama's
second term going just astonishingly well?

As for massive, schizophrenic California, well, what can we
say? In our convoluted, lurching, two steps forward eight steps
sideways sort of quasi-progressive way, we flail and flip and
frequently fail. It's just our way.

We may be a die-hard blue state overall, full of revolutionary
ideas and world-class academics, Nobel Laureates and wondrous
alternative belief systems, but we are also messy and flat-footed and
just too damn big for our own good, and our southern half is packed to
the Orange County rafters with piles of aging social conservatives and
religious zealots with far too little spiritual/sexual awareness and
far too much money. Sorry.

It's an undeniable shame indeed that this powerful, iconic,
world-altering state couldn't get its damnable act together on The Last
Civil Right. But, you know, oh well. Can't be the vanguard for 'em all.
Iowa and Massachusetts, et al, please show us how it's done. And by the
way, thank you.

Do not misunderstand: Setbacks like this Prop 8 decision are
painful and even cruel, and the gay couples and activists who've been
at the forefront of the fight since the beginning are nothing short of
heroic. Like civil rights activists of any stripe before them, the
subsequent generations who will take gay rights for granted will have
them to thank forevermore for paving the way and fighting the good
fight.

What's more, there is still an enormous amount of work to be
done, new referendums and protests and fundraisers and
awareness-raisings. The change will not come without help and push.
Hate and homophobia still seethe in myriad pockets of the culture and
the populace at large, even trickling down to dumb-blond
silicon-injected beauty pageant runner-ups who parrot the same
childlike religious misinformation her handlers have pumped into her
kind for 2,000 wickedly patriarchal years.

But these setbacks are not insurmountable roadblocks. They are
merely obnoxious speed bumps on what social conservatives see as our
nation's ungodly highway to hell. They only slow us down a little.

A new campaign in the fight for marriage equality is already taking shape.
Evolution is happening, the energy and momentum are unstoppable. Simply
put, the ignorance and homophobia that fueled and funded Prop 8 in the
first place will not stand.

Don't believe it? Hey, just ask your kids.