Most of those who do argue for denying marriage equality to gay couples are now careful to say that they really, really like gay people. This, like the states’-rights argument, is a replay of the battle over black civil rights. Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of Reconstruction, recalled last week via e-mail how Strom Thurmond would argue in the early 1960s “that segregation benefited blacks and whites and had nothing to do with racism” — as if inequality were O.K. as long as segregationists pushing separate-but-equal “compromises” claimed their motives were pure.
—Frank Rich, who a wise man once told me is a wise man [via]
dvlaries
He is a wise man, and an entertaining one too. Click the ‘via’ and go read yesterday’s column. It soared and will remove any Monday ‘blahs’.
Rich’d be my guest of honor at my dream-dinner party, including Anna Quindlen, Dahlia Lithwick, Ellen Goodman, Leonard Pitts, Joe Conason, Mark Morford, Maureen Dowd, William Rivers Pitt, Gail Collins and Eugene Robinson.
Greg
I usually comment on Frank Rich’s columns each Sunday, but for some reason they didn’t post a comments link yesterday.
Here’s what I was going to post:
“God bless Judith Peabody, who showed that love and kindness can come in unexpected form, and from every quarter.
It’s something I need to bear in mind more often as I stew over those (also from every quarter) who want to pull up the drawbridge and deny me and my partner of seven years equal protection under the law. My arc from worried teen to confident gay man would not have been so long if not for the stigma they perpetuate.
But I need to dwell less on the Antonin Scalias of the world and more on the many people in my life who now unflinchingly and unequivocally support my right to be legally married. Most of them haven’t always felt that way, though they’ve never said so.
Among them are a former NFL player, a fireman, a ninety-something-year-old former judge and my Sunday School teacher mother. I don’t mean to trade on stereotypes here, but there are some things you just know, and I know they didn’t go through life feeling that way about the subject.
But none of them changed their minds overnight, and certainly not from watching Fox News in a cave. They came around after seeing that H. and I aren’t really any different from them. From the dog park to the yard work, we’re a normal couple; we aren’t subversive. Our marriage would not be the asteroid crashing into theirs as the vacuous Michele Bachmann needs them to believe.
As Gail Collins pointed out in her (Saturday) column, however, the slap-your-forehead simple ideas like women voting can take a slap-your-forehead long time to become legal. But with luck, the long arc of public opinion on gay marriage will be far enough along to come crashing down like an asteroid on Anthony Kennedy’s heart by the time the case gets there.
Thanks, Frank. You’re one of the angels, too.”
RomanHans
Greg, you put it beautifully. You know, no matter how our fight goes, it’s great to see that we have such amazing friends and supporters as Judith Peabody and Frank Rich. I don’t know gay people who are as helpful and dedicated toward our cause as Mr. Rich. And I sincerely hope there’s an afterlife, because I want to know that somebody, somewhere went up to Ms. Peabody and said, Lady, you were spectacular.
L.
Someone should get David Kaufman’s *ss over here, just so he can “prove” to us that Frank Rich equating Civil Rights with today’s equal rights battles is baaaaaaad.
Jack E. Jett
I read Frank Rich every week and really look forward to it. He is the BFF ever to the GLBTQ community. He always has. I, too would consider it an honor to have dinner with him.
I think he is about as close to a genius as one can get. His wife is very lucky. I think he is sexy too.