I realize I'm weeks late for this party, but I thought I would mention how pleased I was with the Supreme Court's landmark decision approving gay marriage nationally, in spite of Justice Kennedy's overly florid decision brief and Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia's whiny butthurt. I have to be honest, however, that my personal reaction to the ruling was predictably self-absorbed, but then it's difficult not to be self-absorbed when you struggle with mental illness. All of the celebrations of happy people just reminded me how lonely and isolated I am, and all of the excoriated rhetoric lambasting allowing human beings to form families as comes natural for them just reinforced all of the internalized homophobia in my psyche from growing up gay when and where I did.
In my mind, all of this positive improvement in the lives of LGBT people really began with the other landmark decision—handed down ten years to the day before Obergefell—that said you can't criminalize the private behavior of consenting adults because you find it icky and feel comfortable with seeing and treating a class of people as less than human. It gladdens my heart that I've lived to see such changes in our society as our nation struggles to get closer to the lofty ideals outlined in our founding documents.
The Truth About the Gay Agenda
You can't swing a dead cat in the debate over LGBT issues without someone (religious types mostly) throwing out the pundit buzzwords "gay agenda." So as a public service, I thought I would summarize our nefarious manifesto:
- As citizens, we in the LGBT community have to shoulder the exact same obligations in society. We have to obey the same laws and pay the same taxes. As such we refuse to live like second class citizens and demand equal access to a safe social space. Our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is just as sacred as yours, and we should be able to exercise that right without discrimination, harassment, threats or violence.
- A free society should have room for people that we disagree with, including the freedom to be bigoted and prejudiced against others, but your liberty to swing your fist ends just where our noses begin.
- Our visibility has led to the exponential improvement in our treatment by society, and it is unreasonable to expect us to return to wretched, marginalized lives in the closet for your comfort because you find us to be an inconvenient truth. You have seen that we are your family members, your neighbors and your friends.
- Being true to certain parts of ourselves has absolutely no bearing on our character: some of us are saints, some of us are assholes and most of us are somewhere in between.
- We should be able to simply talk to people without having to assess them and without having to worry about their reactions and without having to remember to switch our pronouns. You talk about your relationships in casual conversation all of the time, and we don't accuse you of wearing your sexuality on your sleeve or talking about ass play around children. You take that luxury for granted so much so that you don't even realize that you have it.
- We're just trying to get through our day the same as you. If you want to serve the public, then you should serve everyone. In order to use a business open to the public, we shouldn't have to conform to your notions of gender and sexuality or ask your permission or be burdened with pre-clearing every purchase of goods and services beforehand to make sure we meet your criteria of what you deem acceptable. If you're a public servant, then our taxes pay your salary as much as anyone else's, and you have an ethical obligation to fulfill your sworn oath and serve all of the public equally, regardless of your personal or religious beliefs.