Seventeen years ago the Clinton Administration disappointed me deeply by going along with this policy. I don't know how many remember, but it was NOT what Clinton wanted. It was what he could get. My disappointment wasn't that he went along, it was that, instead of trying to sell it as something valuable and good, he didn't stand up and say, "This is the best we can get at this moment because of the asinine bigotry that still exists in this country toward gays, but I will not rest until we come to our senses and bring equality to all under the law," or something close to that.
Seventeen fucking years. Nothing has changed about being gay over that span, it's simply "lag time." I look back over the years since I was about 11 when I discovered Stella Stevens in one of my dad's Playboy magazines and began flirtation with my lifelong addiction to masturbation, and remember how embarrassing it was to be HETEROsexual, and what shame there was in being so trapped under the influence of my own biology. What must it have been like for the kids who were gay?
Some of the most successful, smart, influential people I've known in my adult life have been gay; kids I coached, kids I taught, kids I worked with in therapy, along with adults who taught me life lessons I could have never learned from bigots of any kinds. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed my senior year of high school. I'm 64 now and we're still deciding whether one more group is deserving of civil rights.
I still haven't decided whether I think human beings are on the path toward the apex of evolution or if we're just another catastrophic event, but if we're going to be on that "path" we better learn to adapt faster.
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