Who is Who Doesn't Matter...the Gays Win

Visiting with The Sums, it wasn’t long before Rob Portman’s recent announcement entered the conversation.  http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/21654568/gay-marriage-senators-shift-gop-soul-searching

“What do you think?” Dim Sum asked.

“I think it’s like when we fought the civil war,” I said.

“How so?”
“Well—you had two groups who wanted different things, so they combined efforts to get what they wanted and then got something altogether different”.

I explained how the 19^th Century Republicans gathered disparate groups to sustain power.  Emancipation might not have been the goal of one ally or of scattered members in many, but that’s what happened before all was said and done.

So, the world learns of a dad-(R) who made an observation about his 3 children and then stood in front of the mirror.  “It’s not right that two of my three get to be free.”

Or maybe the ‘senator’ in him said, “My son is a constituent and I have a responsibility, as a member of the majority and as his senator, to protect members of the minority.”  That would have been very Jeffersonian of him.  But, probably that’s not at all what he said if he thought it at all.

I think he admitted something like, “I want my son to feel love and to be loved.”

So, the father-senator goes to the Republican powers that could permit such a public statement or they come to him—because these guys are really out of touch with their own allies and really, really out of touch with Americans who grew tired during 8 warring years of faux Christian bullying—, and they strike a deal.  Wham! The father-senator of a gay son matches powers with grand ol’ Republicans who want to have a revolutionary CPAC party and then roll out a convincing plan that they can actually be humane (before the next election).

“You see, it’s like the Civil War but different. Two bodies join powers to get what they want.  Who is zooming who doesn’t matter as long as the gays win. Horray!”

Dim Sum said she doesn’t buy it, and then Mr. Sum said that I was explaining “dialectic materialism.” He always says that I say things that I don’t say by tidying it up with a philosophical model.  It’s nice of him to share his intelligence and package my rambling into a digestible capsule.  I looked up dialectic materialism and said that if he was going to call me a communist, I’d much prefer to be a Hegel one than a Marx one.

What Mr. Sum meant was that Hegel put forth that humans who are in disagreement—thesis and antithesis—grow as a result of coming together.  This makes me wonder if/how/when I will benefit from the embrace with anti-thesis allies.

The undone dilemma that hung in the air was, “Where do we go from here?”  With Colorado breaking new ground and the grand ol’ partiers sobering up, will thesis and anti-thesis advocates all wake up one day and say, “Hooray and big whoop. The gays can get married.” And then Americans can fold the paper and crunch their dry toast and get on with their day. 

Our problem has always been that gays aren’t persecuted enough.  (Clearly, I’ve been sheltered but would love to receive rebuttals or full stories of hardships that I’ve not faced).  We’re not like the slaves or even like the blacks who pushed—for God-granted rights and change—during the Civil Rights Movement.  American gays of today can’t point to physical abuses on a grand scale or prejudices that keep us from meeting fundamental needs.  In many situations our careers and jobs are protected by self-selecting corporations who have set an ethical standard for those who might have been resistant for as long as it took Mississippi to ratify the 13^th Amendment. And, the majority of us can minimize our gay loveness so that the majority of the anti-thesis advocates are comfortable enough to remain in the room and share oxygen until the bar mitzvah, heterosexual wedding, or graduation is over.  We can stay in the closet if we just try a bit harder.  So, all of these do-gooder deeds (that come from the anti-thesis and thesis camps) absolutely work against my minority’s right for a monumental, earth-shattering civil rights evolution.  We need to get really mad about something and cause a big realization before the grand ol’ partiers comes over the hill, set up the keg, and haze us—even if we have to make something up.

For the most part, we don’t fight because we don’t have one.  We’ve spent a little over half a century hoping to peek over the top of the fence line and look with envy at the neighbor’s grass.  Our desire for civil unions beckons for membership in a clique that roots in nostalgia and lets snake-oil salesmen sell its essence.  50% of all marriages end in a divorce because no one can market the ointment, the panacea for getting along “until death we do part.”  Isn’t anyone suspicious that the grand ol’ partiers are allowing us to join an eroding norm?  This is going to cost me big money, I can feel it.

I need to ask my community, “Do we think that we’d do marriage better because we are super-humans?” I’m not; I don’t.  We want in their stupid clubhouse because they said we can’t be in it. We kick the base of the tree with our necks crooked and cramped up toward the sky, murmuring for something that statistics show is a 50-50 gamble.  

Now, there are some in our community who really want this right and have good reason to pursue documented protections.  They do the heavy lifting while willing-bodied good people like me pull out and dust off the camping fold-out chair so that I have a comfortable seat along the sidelines of the evolutionary parade.  Why? Because I know that equal rights are mine to receive for as long as the United States Constitution—that we’re all citing in court systems across the nation—is the same one that was signed by John Hancock. I’m waiting them out.   I know my rights and truth will be victorious in the end.  Certainly Mr. Sum has a grand name for this philosophical model.

“Lazy.”

“Let’s call it peaceful resistance—like the counter-sitters and bus-boycotters, like Ghandi,” I would offer over his magical giggle.  “All I need now is the opportunity to scrap with my soon-to-be allies.”