Hi, homophobes.
We need to talk.
You've been kind of busy lately, and you've had a few victories.
But I'm here to tell you something:
It. Gets. Worse.
* * *
I'm in my 40s.
When I was growing up, there was one obviously gay kid in my high school, the kid almost everyone mocked and teased.
I came out in college, and I received personal threats on a routine basis: nasty phone calls in the middle of the night, hostile and vicious notes left on my door.
You know the drill. Some of you probably even made those calls, with your buddies, up late drinking, thinking, “Hey, that will be fun!"
Friends of mine have had it worse. Some of have actually been gay-bashed or threatened with violence.
And then there was Matthew Shepard.
And I think of this image, frozen in time, of a kid beaten so brutally, so badly, but still taking almost a week to die, the picture of him, just suspended there, so public and open in the brutality that people recoiled.
I think that might have been when things started to change.
* * *
And things have been changing, faster than you'd ever imagined.
Just over a decade ago, you engaged us in a bitter, brutal fight in Vermont over civil unions, the second-class-citizen version of marriage equality. We won that fight, and it cost some good members of the House and Senate their seats.
And then, in Massachusetts, over the course of days, you shifted civil unions from this horrible, terrible idea into something else: the conservative alternative to marriage.
It started with “protect marriage at all costs” and suddenly veered into “but of course everyone deserves equal rights.”
You lost then. And you tried to enact a constitutional amendment (in a state where frankly it's not that hard to do), and you lost then, too.
* * *
I know the numbers for us are small, but that's how things like this work. We've won in other states since then. Vermont now has full marriage rights. You tried to run primaries against one of the Republicans who supported them, in an extremely conservative district.
You failed. Again.
New Hampshire was teetering, but even with an extremely conservative legislature, you just got your asses handed to you with respect to same-sex marriage.
You know why?
Because legislators are a lot more scared of us than they are of you.
They feel this way with good reason.
You go from state to state, finding small crowds of bigots to come and complain about us, to testify in your own vicious and bitter fashion.
We talk about hope, and family, and the future, and we do it without bitterness, with clarity, and with love.
And all you really have is, “This will destroy marriage.”
But it won't.
And I think you know this. We heard the desperation in your voice, the laughable testimony in California during the trials over Proposition 8 (not to mention some of the problems with your witnesses).
You know about trials, right? They're the places where you actually have to support your ideas with evidence. And fact.
But you don't have that. You've got “the sky is falling.” You're telling people that same sex-marriage will destroy things.
We've got Vermont.
And New Hampshire.
And Massachusetts.
And Connecticut.
And Iowa.
(Yes, Iowa).
And New York.
And Maryland.
And Washington. (Both the state and the District of Columbia!)
And we've got those as examples of places where same-sex marriage is not only legal, but where it's just there, and where soon enough it will fade into the background. No one seems to be confused these days when I fill out forms indicating my status as “married” and have a woman's name listed as my spouse.
In other words, it's becoming normal.
And yes, I know that scares you. Hell, my whole life I've been told I'm abnormal, and suddenly no one seems to feel that way, and even I'm confused about that some of the time.
But there it is.
And last year, a New York state senator who ran in opposition to same-sex marriage released a statement and voted “yes” for marriage equality.
And another longstanding senator, who previously voted against same-sex marriage, issued his own statement, explaining how important it was that he vote his conscience.
And these two senators? They're in very conservative districts. They know what they're doing. They might lose their chances at reelection because of their stance.
They don't care about that, because they're doing what's right, not what's politically expedient.
So you lost.
Again.
And in Washington State? Republican State Senator Maureen Walsh had her own statement to make that illustrates the point so very well:
“[W]hen I think of my husband, and I think of all the wonderful years we had, and the wonderful fringe benefit of having three beautiful children - I don't miss the sex. You know? And to me, that's kind of what this boils down to. I don't miss that.
“I mean, I certainly miss it. But it is certainly not the aspect of that relationship, that incredible bond that I had with that human being, that I really, really genuinely wish I still had.
“And so I think to myself, 'How could I deny anyone the right to have that incredible bond with another individual in life?' To me it seems almost cruel.”
And you lost. Again.
* * *
So you've got a choice here.
You can, of course, hold onto your ideas. You can keep fighting for your right to be afraid of gay people, and you can cloak that fear in such terms as “protect marriage” or use words like “sanctity” and other catchphrases that, over time, will just lose their meaning.
You can waste time and energy with your bigotry and hostility.
But before you decide, just take a deep breath for a moment and think about this:
You know those people in their 70s who talk about interracial marriage with that sneer in their voice, those people everyone else rolls their eyes at? The ones people just kind of forgive for their hideous prejudices because they're too old to learn to be any better?
That's you.
Maybe not today. Maybe not in five years.
But in 10 years? Probably.
In 20, almost definitely.
You've got a limited window here to be on the right side of history. It's your choice to decide where you want to be here, but that chance won't last forever.
And I'm telling you now that if you don't take that chance soon, you're going to be left in the dustbin of history, without any real opportunity for redemption.
Because for you, from this point on?
It. Gets. Worse.