Forming a more perfect union (a work-in-progress)

Out here on Christmas Island, we have a proposition on the November ballot to allow gay people to get married. To each other (gasp)!

As we do every election, The Missus and I have my most excellent friend and dedicated right-winger The Last Boy Scout run down and sum up the various obtusely-worded ballot propositions and initiatives for us, then usually vote the opposite of what he advocates. He’s one of them old-school conservatives – isn’t looking to take over the world or shove Democracy down the throats of people in far-off lands who haven’t asked for our help. Usually his ethos is centered around not liking to pay taxes; he’s a proper fiscal conservative. So we were a little surprised (well, I wasn’t but The Missus was) when he recommended against the gay marriage proposition.

Here’s part of what he wrote:

Gay Marriage Proposition
Personally, as much as I believe in equal treatment under the law, I have problems with government treating two dudes getting married the same as a man and woman getting married. I'm cool with existing bans on marrying your progeny, marrying underage kids, and that sort of thing because some laws are actually needed to keep society running in an orderly and upright manner. And I know that the gay teachers and activists will insist on full inclusion of "Heather Has Two Mommies" stuff in the curriculum, and they already are taking kids on field trips to see gay weddings. Everywhere marriage is mentioned, there will be a little propaganda about how great it is that two hairy guys can get married, like it's as normal as anything. I have trouble seeing it that way.

The Missus expressed her disappointment to me, and I responded as follows:

Yeah, but read his text carefully. He’s right. Two dudes (or chicks) getting married isn’t “as normal as everything.” Not yet.

Also note, again carefully studying the text, The Last Boy Scout seems to have a bigger problem with gay dudes getting married than gay chicks. I think this comes from the same cultural whatever-it-is that gives me the willies when I see a couple of dudes swapping spit on the street. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a couple of really good-looking guys. It was built into The Last Boy Scout and me and our whole pan-generation of young males (both our dads were born in the nineteen-teens) to become unhinged by gay-guy PDAs (and turned on by two chicks, no matter how good-looking or not). Being a left-winger by nature, I identified my aversion as a shortcoming on my end to be addressed, but The Last Boy Scout aligning himself with the right on this cultural issue is just a predictable result of his overall rightward tilt.

Plus, if you’ve ever been the little boy who’s not as good at sports as your peers in the playground and had your sexuality questioned before you had even begun to give the idea any thought, and have been the victim of gay epithets hurled at you, as I was and The Last Boy Scout probably was too – you’re probably going to be drawn to overcompensating to prove it ain’t so. I’m disappointed too that The Last Boy Scout didn’t rise above his programming and take a more progressive view, but for me it falls into the “Expected To Happen” category. It’s the easier, safer choice for his demographic and (this is me, imagining the GOP thought process) who cares, the fucking liberals are going to ram it through anyhow. This is Christmas Island, after all! Massachusetts and us, we can become safe havens for all the pole-smokers and carpet munchers in the country! It would be awesome for our tax base… (Back to me again) That’s actually a fiscally-sound argument. Hmmm... Perhaps I should pitch it to TLBS that way.

Anyhow, it is what it is. Social change always comes about in America, albeit incrementally. It never slides backwards. It’s one of the things I love about this country. And most of the time, ground-zero for social change is the state I live in. I can’t wait to vote for gay marriage. A few years after it becomes accepted practice, it’ll be a windfall for divorce lawyers if gay marriages turn out to have same batting average as hetero ones. More moolah for the tax base! Everybody wins, even fiscal conservatives.

As for the die-hard social conservatives, once they lose the gay marriage battle, they’ll turn to some other vestigial injustice from the past and spend a couple of decades trying and failing to codify it. I wonder what it’ll be once women, minorities and gays have gotten their civil rights? Maybe they’ll circle back in time and try to run the Native Americans off their reservations and into the sea.

So I wrote my friend back, thanking him for his input. I’m actually going to vote along the lines of a couple of his (reliably fiscally tight-fisted) recommendations. I told him that The Missus was disappointed in his anti-gay marriage vote and that I had defended his opposition by putting it into a broader social context.

I told him: Gay Marriage – it’s the new interracial dating. Some day, our kids (maybe our grandkids, but I think sooner) will shake their heads and wonder what the big deal was.

We’re dinosaurs, dude, and rightly so. We’re potentially at the precipice of electing our first black president. When I was born, Jim Crow effectively kept lots of African-Americans from even voting. The times, they are indeed a-changing.

Wonder what little boys will call each other on the playground when the day comes that “FAG!!” has lost its currency. Or maybe, like “nigger,” it’ll still have the power to raise hackles and provoke hostility long after the issues that brought it to prominence have been laid to rest.

If our goals remain true to the Founding Fathers’ vision (as we agree they should), America will always have work to do perfecting our Union. And securing equal rights for all, regardless of race, class, creed or gender will remain a cornerstone of that endeavor.