If I’ve learned something since the last time I posted it’s that I can’t teach a class, volunteer, hold down a job, and write a blog.
If I’ve learned something else, something more interesting, it’s that you never know when things will change or how, but you know they will.
When I was a high school student I wrote an op-ed about the injustice of sodomy laws, then on the books in the majority of states and upheld by the Supreme Court in 1986. “Someday,” I told my mom, “people are going to think about civil rights for gay people like they think about civil rights for black people, like it’s just obvious.” (Put aside the incredible naivety I had about how people think about race.)
Although the Supreme Court reversed itself in 2003, most of the first years of the twenty-first century were marked by the passage of cynical “defense of marriage amendments” mainly designed to get conservative voters to the polls to support candidates. Not very encouraging.
As everyone knows, Minnesota recently became the first state to vote no on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, rejecting that strategy and demonstrating that the tide was finally turning nationwide. Not long afterwards, it became the 12th state to vote in favor of marriage equality. Good stuff. Very exciting and moving.
Today I was listening to the radio in the kitchen, to the station KDWB, THE station for teens and young adults that I have been gradually forced to allow to share air time with my beloved public radio. A song came on and it took me back to 1990, when I was listening to KDWB on purpose, for myself, in my apartment. I called in to complain because the DJ was making fun of “limp-wristed” guys in “lavender polo shirts.” For real? The guy hung up on me.
More than 20 years later, KDWB has moved from homo jokes to playing this beautiful song. Change is good.
What Real World? 