Thank You Mr. President

The time for a major institutional figure to come out for gay marraige is long overdue.  It has now become a good deal harder for the haters to hold to the conceit of being both the enforcers and embodiment of some Great Eternal Convention.  Not that this is going to stop them mind you, since it's basically what they do for a living. 

As a personal aside, I was visiting my family in North Platte the other day.  I was listening to NPR while driving with my father.  One of the anchors mentioned something about opposition to gay marraige still being something like 43%.  Why? asked Dad (I was listening to the radio for the purpose of listening to the radio.  Not to offer him a pretense for rightously expounding his views on whatever.  Still this is how he interprets most all external stimuli.)  'I thought we had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

"Not that I've ever met a gay guy who was happy" he added.  "Do you really think that your Cousin Dennis is happy?"  Cousin Dennis is Dennis Milbrought, nephew to my late grandmother. Besides being gay he is best known for his Keith Richards like undead powers.  Still alive in spite of having had full blown AIDS for twelve years and a hard drug habit that he still occasionaly falls back into far into middle age.  "Gay is the wrong word for it" Dad said.  "Gay means happy right.  It just seems like a path to self-destruction for me." 

Implicit in his remarks was his clear belief that every man has both the natural instinct and natural mandate to reproduce and become fuedal overlord of his own house.  A thing that I feel unbound to do myself anytime soon if ever.  More to the point I suddenly realized that my parents actually don't know me all too well.  Had it really not occured to them that there might be LGBT's out there that I know more intimately then the second cousin in LA that I see twice a decade?  Or for that matter that I might know more than a few candle-burning trainwrecks that are perfectly hetero?   I mean I've been to college, and the big city too.  One mingles in these places after all.  Have they really never considered that? 

Anyway, sorry to use you as a kvetching board dear reader.