“all the same people, all of us”

With warmth and humor, Anna Quindlen, writing for Newsweek, tells it like it is in The Same People

Here’s what I don’t understand: is there so much love and commitment in the world that we can afford, as a society, to be contemptuous of some portion of it? If two women in white want to join hands in front of their families and friends and vow to love and honor one another until they die, the only reasonable response to that is happy tears, awed admiration and societal approval. And—this part is just personal opinion—one of those big honking KitchenAid mixers with the dough hook.

Before we know it that will be the response everywhere, not just in Denmark and the Netherlands and Canada and California: approval, appliances. The polls predict the future. The younger you are, the more likely you are to know someone who is gay. The more likely you are to know someone who is gay, the more likely you are to support gay marriage. The opposition is aging out.

Someday soon the fracas surrounding all this will seem like a historical artifact, like the notion that women were once prohibited from voting and a black individual from marrying a white one. Our children will attend the marriages of their friends, will chatter about whether they will last, will whisper to one another, “Love him, don’t like him so much.” The California Supreme Court called gay marriage a “basic civil right.” In hindsight, it will merely be called ordinary life.

4 thoughts on ““all the same people, all of us”

  1. Indeed. I daydream about the day when we don’t actually notice. When we’re more concerned about how incredibly tacky that baby blue shirt is than the fact that it’s a “gay wedding.” In the scheme of things, it’s not been all that long since the marriage between someone of French descent and someone of English was considered scandalous.

    Okay, bad example. But still! Is there so much happiness in the world that we can afford to criticize?

    That’s right, Chris–next stop, nude weddings. Yay!

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