Mark Morford: The big gay shrug-Sorry, enemies of gay marriage. Prop 8 or no, you've already lost

[n2doc]

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Here's a fun thing to do to calm your frazzled, saddened nerves in the wake of the CA Supreme Court's very unfortunate, but also merely annoying and karmically fleeting Proposition 8 decision:

Head on down to your local high school -- hell, make it a junior high or even an elementary -- and take yourself an informal survey. Ask the various wary, bepimpled youth of Generation Tweet what they think about those scary gay people getting married.

Ask them, in your most panicky, alarmist, Mormonified voice: Aren't they horrified at the very idea? Aren't they shocked at the very thought of two people in love having their union officially recognized and validated by the state?

Don't they know the musty ol' Bible mutters some barely coherent, mistranslated silliness about it in a single word or two written 1,500 years ago in a long dead language by acidic church elders with powermad political agendas and violently repressed libidos who nevertheless wish to instruct us all how to live and love and screw?

Please note the response. Please observe how the kids merely look at you as though you're more than a little bit deranged and prehistoric, so out of touch you might as well be Dick Cheney talking up the diesel-powered rectal thermometers he so loved back in World War I.

more:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/05/27/notes052709.DTL&tsp=1

[Skittles]

1. I'm loving it

I believe I'll see opposition to gay marriage falling quickly in the years ahead - so in my lifetime I will have seen the bias against mixed marriages AND gay marriages take a hammering :thumbsup:

[Booster]

3. I totally agree. Hell, we saw a black man get elected and they

said that would never happen. I've just got to say though that the Yes on 8 people ran a much better campaign that the No on 8 people did. The Yes people campaigned to confuse the ignorant, and it worked, sadly.

[Skittles]

7. I do not think I'll see a female president in my lifetime

the bias agains women is still alive and kicking

[Booster]

9. I don't either - but I'm pretty old. LOL

[Mari333]

2. excellent and true

its always darkest before the dawn.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

4. As usual, Morford is both correct

and wonderfully snarky,

[Mythsaje]

5. That's what I said...

They're a dying breed and they know it. They've already lost the culture war and are just too stupid to fall down.

[tavalon]

16. Just too stupid to fall down! Priceless!

[Berry Cool]

6. Ultimately, this issue will go to the Supreme Court.

Not necessarily this year, or next, or the year after that. But it will, and when it does, that court will end this nonsense once and for all.

Either that, or there will be a constitutional amendment, and the amendment will eventually be ratified, no matter how much kicking and screaming takes place first.

I truly believe that.

[varelse]

8. Oooh, and he's fucking nailed California :)

As for massive, schizophrenic California, well, what can we say? In our convoluted, lurching, two steps forward eight steps sideways sort of quasi-progressive way, we flail and flip and frequently fail. It's just our way.

We may be a die-hard blue state overall, full of revolutionary ideas and world-class academics, Nobel Laureates and wondrous alternative belief systems, but we are also messy and flat-footed and just too damn big for our own good, and our southern half is packed to the Orange County rafters with piles of aging social conservatives and religious zealots with far too little spiritual/sexual awareness and far too much money. Sorry.

Yup, that's my home state. :crazy:

[truedelphi]

10. It's scary ain't it?

I keep thinking of how one of my RW neighbors will tell me that this decision was the only possible decision, because after all, God wants it this way!

I wanna say, "Doesn't it tell ya something that when John, Jesus' fave apostle is mentioned, he is referred to as the one that Jesus loved?"

[ColbertWatcher]

12. I forget which comedian said California was like a bowl of Grape Nuts ...

... filled with fruits, flakes and nuts.

And we are.

I just want us to get back to being progressive (remember Upton Sinclair? Jerry Brown?), rather than satisfied with being only known as progressive.

There are far too many GOPers in my beloved state. We should annex San Diego, Orange and all those desert counties to some place where they won't hurt anyone anymore.

[varelse]

17. Dump the desert counties? Hell no. I say - take them back!

My lifelong-liberal parents live there - straight ticket Progressive Dem voters. ;)

[Cha]

11. That's what I'm talkin' about!

<more snips>

"Evidence? Plenty. Just look at the numbers: Support for gay marriage is now the highest it's been in American history, somewhere between 42 and 48 percent nationwide. Just a few decades ago, support was down in the 20s. It's been rising steadily ever since, never once regressing.


Or, flip that data around. According to FiveThirtyEight, marriage bans like California's are losing support at a rate of about two percent a year. According to that model, more than half of U.S. states will vote against bans like the contemptible Prop 8 as soon as 2012, if not sooner. By 2024, even miserably homophobic joints like Alabama and Mississippi will be flying the rainbow flag.

<end snips>

Do not misunderstand: Setbacks like this Prop 8 decision are painful and even cruel, and the gay couples and activists who've been at the forefront of the fight since the beginning are nothing short of heroic. Like civil rights activists of any stripe before them, the subsequent generations who will take gay rights for granted will have them to thank forevermore for paving the way and fighting the good fight.

What's more, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done, new referendums and protests and fundraisers and awareness-raisings. The change will not come without help and push. Hate and homophobia still seethe in myriad pockets of the culture and the populace at large, even trickling down to dumb-blond silicon-injected beauty pageant runner-ups who parrot the same childlike religious misinformation her handlers have pumped into her kind for 2,000 wickedly patriarchal years."

[nichomachus]

13. Generation Tweet???

Sorry, Mark, but you're showing your age. Twitter is most prevalent in the 45-54 age demographic. The kids aren't really interested in it. It's a geezer thing.

[Lisa0825]

14. This article has expressed my hope.....

Ever since Texas' gay marriage vote, and hearing the disbelief in the words of the youth here, I have been anticipating that they will be the change.

I hate that people I know are hurt by this. I can't expect them to accept "be patient." But I really do believe it is inevitable. I just wish it would happen faster.

[tavalon]

15. Yep, enemies of gay rights have already lost

These are the painful dying gasps of a bigotry that is being bred out. The youngsters don't see the problem with teh gay. Another couple of decades and we will see gay rights as obviously right, just like the okayness of blacks and whites marrying or women voting.

[DCKit]

18. Their faux outrage and fearmongering have overloaded our ability to be fearful and outraged.

It's not just the kids. We've all got more important things to worry about and they've beat all the life out of fearing Teh Gay.

And don't tell 'em, but they're on the same track with Terra! Terra! Terra! Those of us who don't live in a bubble deal with people of different races, creeds and lifestyles every day and enjoy having the diversity as a part of our lives. My own neighborhood has become far more interesting over the past two decades as it's become more ethnically diverse. There is nothing that could convince me it was better before.