Just look at the number of states that passed "prophylactic" anti-gay marriage statutes, vowing not only to make such marriage impossible but to deny recognition to those couples already married elsewhere. (The battle over interracial marriage ended only 40 years ago, and prior to 1967 the country was a patchwork of states, those where such marriages were recognized and others where they were illegal.) The political arena is still dominated by those "allies" who think standing up for equal rights for gays and lesbians is the kiss of death for a candidacy. (Aside from the west side of Manhattan, and similar utopia in West Hollywood, San Francisco and Massachusetts. Statements by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Elizabeth Edwards in favor of equal marriage rights are still extremely rare and make headlines.) Unfortunately, if you dig a bit deeper you will find that a large proportion of men and women in our community is still not living in the Will & Grace, L Word, Queer-as-Folk or Noah's Ark fantasy land. But we are moving there, and probably more swiftly than any of us would have imagined at the outset of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s when I came of age.
It is also easy to be distracted by the increasingly visible influence of a tiny handful of wealthy, philanthropic gays and lesbians and confuse their incremental success in improving the climate for the rest of us, with day-to-day life on the streets, even if those streets are suburban. It is instructive that the Columbus, Ohio couple interviewed for this article say they face no open hostility as gay parents raising two children, but then in the next breath concede these substantial worries: "Mr Strasser wonders whether a public school would recognise that his children have two fathers, or if a hospital would allow both of them to visit if one of their children fell ill." If gay and lesbian parents have to worry whether they will be recognized as parents of their own children at a hospital or school, we still have a long way to go. The article quotes writer Paul Varnell as saying: “Far from being radicals of any sort, most of us are just plain ol' bourgeois. How much more bourgeois can you be than wanting to marry the person you love and wanting to serve in the military?” That may be true, but the freedom to marry and serve openly in the military remains a remote reality for almost all of us (even Arabic linguists!). Perhaps Varnell's point is that increasingly lesbians and gay are ready for assimilation (tolerance), or more thorough integration into the mainstream (tolerance), whenever that mainstream is ready for us (tolerant).