Dear J-
It’s a short week, which makes it an odd week. After going in early this morning, we came out with some daylight (it’s rainy out there again tonight) and marveled at the novelty of being able to see where you’re going. The world hasn’t been plunged into perpetual darkness; I just need to pick up some habit that takes me outdoors occasionally during the day.
Still the earth keeps spinning. The recent ruling in Florida reveals more hope for the future; some of the arguments for the law banning the right for gay couples to adopt sound firmly rooted in the same tortured pseudologic used to justify all sorts of abridged rights in the past. The moral absolutists in the crowd don’t realize that when there’s always a wedge to drive between people, at some point, you run out of ground to stand on; if you truly believe in the individual, there’s always some point of differentiation between you and everyone.
We fear the unknown in terms of the known; we phrase things in small words and hope that the point comes across by relating it to concrete examples. The late surge for the Yes on 8 folks came with ads decrying the teaching of same-sex marriage in schools — much of the early returns showing a comfortable lead for No on 8 came from the abstraction of the idea: how would allowing same-sex marriages affect our marriage, our lives? The answer, then and now: it wouldn’t, it won’t. Yet you drag emotion into it and kids — oh, kids — and anyone would react strongly. It speaks to the secret fear that gay is a choice and gives wings to the lie that repression is a better choice than education.
Mike
Tags: emotion, fear, future, hope, kids, known, prop 8, unknown
Dear J- 
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