a sense of urgency

So Obama promised to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Again. The gays are not impressed. They had a fight about it on CNN. Hillary Rosen was the only one who defended Obama. She said, "Look. Four years ago President Bush stood before the country and tried to write us out of the Constitution. And guess what: he was re-elected. So the idea that this is not a complete seachange, that we should not take this guy at his word for what we've seen, to me is mind-boggling."

How many months has Obama been President? Nine? Ten? How many different directions is he being pulled, by everyone? I understand why the Gay Community is so geared up. We finally, finally have a legitimately sympathetic President and we want as much progress to happen as quickly as possible before Republicans take over again and have us all deported or shoot us into the Moon or something.

But I think everyone needs to chill out just a tiny bit. He's trying. Would George W. Bush have shown his face at an HRC event, ever? Fuck no. Are you kidding me?

This shit is going to take some time. And I understand that we all feel like we've got a limited time to push all this progress through, we all see the guillotine blade, just waiting to fall in four years, or eight, or less even, but progress is an unstoppable force. It will happen. Probably not as soon as we'd all like, but it is inevitable.

And Republicans can't do shit about it. Sure they can slow it down. They can make it harder for us. They can make our lives more difficult, temporarily. But they're still going to lose in the end. Bigots and homophobes and frothing-at-the-mouth fundamentalists are all going to lose. They are losing right now. That's why they're so adamant and full of vitriol: they're fucked and they know it.

It's all about hearts and minds. And hearts and minds are changing. Young people these days are wired. They have a much broader perspective on everything. They are more open-minded, less uptight. They have more exposure to the real world. Even Southern Baptists are sort of over the gay thing. They're more worried about Global Warming these days. It will become a non-thing. It will. And we will all be embarrassed about this specific time in our history. "America was so backwards then. Unenlightened."

The Gay Community's job now is to be unified, be awesome and use our considerable political sway as much as possible. We must remain visible. Have voice. Be ourselves. Live the best we can. Show the world we will not surrender. You know, standard stuff. What most of us do already, all the time.

Just give it time. Please. And in the mean time march, lobby and write letters to your congresspeople. Better yet, contribute to the campaign of a non-insane, non-bigot Senator or Representative. Please. There aren't enough of them. It's frightening.

Slight tangent, but did you hear about the defense bill amendment that Al Franken proposed? The one that "would withhold government contracts from organizations like KBR if they restrict employees from taking rape and sexual assault cases to court." (here) It was the one 30 Republican senators (all male) voted against, including, you guessed it, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn.

This is the kind of thing we need to put the kibosh on. Like now. Jesus.