For Valentine's Day: The Same Sex Marriage Fight's Almost Over, and Opponents Have Lost Their Minds:
Choose your metaphor. People who oppose same-sex marriage are batting in the top of the ninth inning, and, chances are, we who support it will have won the game without swinging in the bottom (save your pitcher and catcher jokes). Or how about this: The cake is baked; we just need to ice it. Or maybe: "This is an ex-parrot."
In other words, we're pretty much done here in the United States with the argument over whether or not an adult, gay and/or straight, should be able to marry another adult, should they both be so inclined. Oh, sure, just like a fish flopping on a dock lakeside before it takes its last gasps, there's gonna be some thrashing around. But, unless the Supreme Court stabs that fish in the head so it's over quicker, it's all just a matter of time before it dies.
For what else are we to make of recent events in LGBT advancement? Virginia's ban on gay marriage: struck down. Kentucky's gotta recognize same-sex marriages done in other states. Both are pending appeal, but the state of Virginia ain't even gonna bother, just like the state of Nevada. In Idaho, the state Supreme Court said to conservatives, "Don't be such twats. Of course, gay people can adopt children." Throw in recent decisions in Utah, Ohio, and Oklahoma, and, while we're not at the end of the battle, we're at the point where the fight is coming down to the crazy-ass true believers who are ready to go down shooting (save your "going down" jokes). This is not to mention Michael Sam or that Disney Channel show that freaked out some parents by featuring a lesbian couple who are parents.
Another way to know who's winning is to taste the delicious desperation of the losers. For instance, if you want to see what it looks like when an evangelical Christian legislator doesn't get to put hate for LGBT people into law, check out the Twitter feed of Indiana State Senator Mike Delph. Delph lost his corn-stuffed Hoosier mind when a change in the wording of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage scuttled the whole thing in the legislature. Tweeting like a sparrow on meth, Delph went a good chunk of the night and today responding to people and offering such useful koans as, "Intolerance is accepted against Christian men and women by the media and cultural elite but radically rejected against all others." Remember: "Intolerance," in this sense, means you think that Christians shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against others. It's like the "Stand Your Ground" of ethical arguments.
That sour whiff of a side shitting itself is also strong in the statement in support of the amendment made by Peter Sprigg, a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council (that's apparently a real position you can have). Said Peter spriggily, "Regardless of the private reasons why any individual couple desires or chooses to marry, the reason marriage is a public institution is simple and clear. It brings together men and women for the reproduction of the human race, and keeps together a man and a woman to raise to maturity the children produced by their union." Since pretty much every judge who has ruled on this has called it "bullshit" (or, to use Supreme Court terminology, "argle-bargle"), you gotta wonder if Sprigg even managed to sound convincing.
Of course, now that the gay marriage debate is getting closer and closer to absolutely settled, people who get all queasy thinking about a dude ass-fucking another dude have to come up with a new tactic. In Kansas, the state House has jumped on the "intolerance" train, passing a bill that would allow anyone to deny service to LGBT people. So "the measure would allow any individual, business, or state employee to deny gay couples everything from wedding services to unemployment benefits, as long as the reason for doing so involves a strong religious objection to homosexuality." It's all about "religious liberty" or some such shit. But let's not get our well-cut underwear in a bunch. The state Senate has pretty much said it's dead.
Alas, sweet homophobes who put on a Jesus mask to hide your hate. You live in a society that is becoming increasingly not just tolerant of difference in sexual orientation, but simply doesn't care about it. You're invited to stay and reap the benefits of that. But your bigotry has gotten tiresome, and soon it will be a vestige of an age that only the old and ignorant celebrate.
Oh, lovers, young and old, LGBT or straight, one day very, very soon, all that will matter on Valentine's Day is whether you got your love the right gift.
