The Gay Awakening

The more I read and hear and listen the more it feels as if something is shifting in the gay community since the passage of Proposition 8. A reader writes:

My partner and I attended the Silver Lake Prop. 8 protest on Saturday night as a married couple defending our family.  It will be some time before we know for sure, but the passage of this discriminatory amendment feels like a game-changer.

After a few days of feeling kicked in the gut, worrying what would become of our newly-legal marriages, the community came together around the issue in a way I’ve rarely seen.  Since the ‘Virtually Normal’ days I’ve been waiting for something to galvanize the determination of gay rights supporters.

Through the insulting Defense of Marriage Act proceedings, Sam Nunn’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” circus and numerous lawsuits, there persisted a patience with incremental progress:  a belief that we could endure the slanders and indignities long enough to triumph.

But this campaign to erase us from view and strip away what we have already achieved is something we are not going to stand for.

The protests will go on. By themselves, they may not win us much. But, all the good arguments are on our side, and the longer they persist, the more likely our fellow citizens will be exposed to the real truth of who we are and inured to the lies of the opposition.

I've long believed that the moment every gay person truly wanted the right to marry, and understood the depth of the injustice, we would win. That moment feels much closer today than it did a week ago.

(Photo: a protest in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, by David McNew/Getty.)