G-A-Y in NYC

The gay marriage thing has been so back and forth and up and down that even with it's passage in New York last night, it's hard to believe it's totally done, a lá Lucy pulling the football away one more time.  As with the Civil Rights movement of the 60's I consider it being an incredibly good thing for everybody, not just gay people.  Oppressing people just because they are who they are has never really worked out great for us.  If we're gonna be a free, open society, it's probably better for us that we're actually a free, open sociaty.

Of course, as a white, heterosexual male it's hard for me to personally relate to any of this, but I think Sully's thoughts HERE are very moving, particularly when you've been reading him so long you completely forget he's been living with HIV for over 2 decades:

All I can say is that the case for marriage seemed obvious to me when Mike Kinsley put my essay for gay marriage on the cover of TNR in 1989, and then it became a vital cause for me when I found out I may not live long enough to see it. I wrote Virtually Normal, assuming it would be the only book I ever wrote. And then God's joke was to allow me to survive, something I interpreted as a mission to make the case and fight the cause for those who had fallen before I had managed to escape.

After I quit running TNR, I spent the rest of the 1990s campaigning for this, among gays and straights. With my friend Joe Landau, I produced an anthology of arguments. I went on any radio or TV show that would have me. I lectured on the issue at countless campuses and book talks. I tried - badly - to raise money. At one point, it was all but two of us - me and Evan Wolfson. But the arguments were so strong, more and more allies arrived, gay and straight, and it was a joy for me to march within the parade, not at the front of it. Others have done so much of the work this decade, and the victory is theirs'. But it is, of course, all of ours', gay and straight, who finally saw what justice means and humanity requires.

I slept twelve hours last night. Something had lifted. And now, I must call my husband, yes, my husband, to check in on the new water heater in our cottage in Ptown.

Also, as someone just old enough to remember a time when thinking "let 'em all fucking die out from AIDS" was de riguer, I'm happy because it gives me a chance to drop in my all-time favorite line re: gay people in the movies, from Boiler Room:

[Trendy Manhattan Restaurant]
GAY MAN: Great outfits, you guys just come from a City Council meeting?  Or you just trying to score with the bridge and tunnel crowd?
STEVE: You know what they should do with you guys?  They should put all of you on a fucking island somewhere.
GAY MAN: Yeah? Well, guess what?
STEVE: What?!
GAY MAN: You're on it!