Hola all you tolerant and enlightened folks! One of the big
news items over the weekend that might have gotten lost in the St. Patrick’s
Day revelry was Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman announced that he not only
has a gay son, but is now in favor of gay marriage. It seems as though Sen.
Portman now believes that HIS SON is entitled to the same happiness as all
those straight people out there. Well, how about that!
It’s been interesting to watch the liberals’ reaction to
this. The initial knee-jerk reaction was to complain that Portman has been
virulently anti-gay marriage ONLY because he was being a good political soldier
and advancing the republican agenda. An agenda, by the way, that is only in
place to stir up the base and pander to the religious right because the worst
kept secret in Washington is that the vast majority of republicans don’t give a
crap about gay marriage and even actually privately support it and attend
wedding ceremonies of people on their staff.
Yeah? And? I hate to break this to some of you but up until
a couple of years ago the democrats did the same damn thing. Many congressmen
and women and senators, especially those who represent southern states, took
anti-gay positions simply because they thought it would help them in elections
to do so. SHOCKINGIKNOWRIGHT!
Of course, there is also a large group of liberals who have
a different take on this. Their “complaint” is that Portman only changed his
position on gay marriage when his son came out to him. He never would have
changed nor evolved on this had he not had a gay son. He only supports equal
rights now because it affects someone he’s close to.
Yeah? And? SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO? What’s your point? I hate to
break THIS to you but that’s EXACTLY how Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton
and most of the democrats evolved on this issue. Maybe it didn’t happen
overnight with them by a family member coming out to them, but it did happen
over time as they became more aware of the gay marriage issue and actually
started to be around more and more gay people.
Aannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd …. That exactly how you, you, you
over there with your hands in your pockets looking at the sky and whistling and
… uh … I evolved on this same issue.
Oh sure, we’re all born innocent and have to learn to hate
from our parents, friends, teachers and preachers. Then when we go out into
the real world on our own we start
finding out that a lot of what we were taught about blacks, Mexicans, Jews,
gays, cablinasians and Burkinabés aren’t
nearly as bad as we were led to believe they are. I know that liberals love to
pretend that they remained innocent and pure their whole lives and never found
themselves on the wrong side of any civil rights issues. Liberals also want us
to believe that they never harbored any prejudiced thoughts of any kind at all!
That’s bullshit.
For most of us there have been a lot of “these folks aren’t
that bad at all” revelations after we found ourselves interacting with people
from other cultures for the first time as adults. I was one of those people. I
come from a very small community and while I was lucky to have parents who didn’t
preach intolerance, I didn’t have any significant interaction with blacks, Hispanics,
Asians etc etc until college.
On gays I took the usual path. While I didn’t really have
prejudices against gays* (beyond the “I don’t know anything about homosexuality
and they seem kinda icky prejudices”) I started out as a “no gay marriage” guy
and then became “okay maybe gay civil unions” and then I finally evolved all
the way to not just “yes” on gay marriage but to the belief that gay rights is
a civil rights issue. That evolution was the result of actually being around
gays, getting to know them and realizing that I was wrong on the gay rights and
gay marriage issues. Just like Senator Portman, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary
Clinton and most everyone else.
It’s important to not worry WHAT brought people to finally
doing the right thing and supporting gay marriage. The only thing matters is
that they finally got here and bashing them when they do get here will only
result in others who might be considering coming out in favor of gay marriage to
decide against it.
*Since I was not a regular church goer I was not taught to
hate gays. However, when I was growing up homosexuality was a subject that just
was NOT discussed anywhere by anyone.
