Rare News Desk
Gay conservative writer and blogger Andrew Sullivan dusted off his laptop to share his thoughts on the historic marriage equality ruling. For many people in the gay rights movement, Sullivan has been a major influence on how they view themselves and the battle for equality. The fact that he’s finally seeing something for which he fought for so long come to pass is an amazing punctuation mark on his career. Here’s an excerpt from his post reflecting on where we’ve been and what has finally been achieved.
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Talking about the early days:
In fact, we lost and lost and lost again. Much of the gay left was deeply suspicious of this conservative-sounding reform; two thirds of the country were opposed; the religious right saw in the issue a unique opportunity for political leverage – and over time, they put state constitutional amendments against marriage equality on the ballot in countless states, and won every time. Our allies deserted us. The Clintons embraced the Defense of Marriage Act, and their Justice Department declared that DOMA was in no way unconstitutional the morning some of us were testifying against it on Capitol Hill. For his part, president George W. Bush subsequently went even further and embraced the Federal Marriage Amendment to permanently ensure second-class citizenship for gay people in America. Those were dark, dark days.
I think of the gay kids in the future who, when they figure out they are different, will never know the deep wound my generation – and every one before mine – lived through: the pain of knowing they could never be fully part of their own family. I think, more acutely, of the decades and centuries of human shame and darkness and waste and terror that defined gay people’s lives for so long. I think of all those who supported this movement who never lived to see this day., who died in the ashes from which this phoenix of a movement emerged. This momentous achievement is their victory too – for marriage, as Kennedy argued, endures past death.
I never believed this would happen in my lifetime when I wrote my first several TNR essays and then my book, Virtually Normal, and then the anthology and the hundreds and hundreds of talks and lectures and talk-shows and call-ins and blog-posts and articles. I thought the book, at least, would be something I would have to leave behind me – secure in the knowledge that its arguments were, in fact, logically irrefutable, and would endure past my own death, at least somewhere. I never for a milisecond thought I would live to be married myself. Or that it would be possible for everyone. But it has come to pass. All of it.
