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15 Jun 2007 10:45 am

We Win

That was quick, wasn't it? Mike Kinsley writes about the quiet gay revolution here. Money quote:

We still argue about it, but the whole spectrum of debate has moved left. A right-wing thug like Tom DeLay or Newt Gingrich probably has more advanced views about homosexuals than dainty liberals of the past century like Adlai Stevenson or Hubert Humphrey.

My only dissent is with the concept of "left." I know, I know. The GOP has clearly been on the other side of this issue, for the most part, for years now. But the basic argument for gay equality these past two decades has not been "left". It's been a classic integrationist argument: let us serve openly in the military; let us embrace the responsibility of family; leave us alone. In some ways, as I have quixotically been arguing for too long, the gay movement since the 1980s has been pretty conservative. (And Kinsley got me to write the first serious conservative argument for gay marriage back in 1989.) For example: Can you think what people would call a mobilization of African-Americans to tackle HIV without government assistance - a mobilization that helped arrest the HIV epidemic in a matter of years? They'd call it a paragon of self-help and individual responsibility. But we're gay, and so we don't qualify for conservative support, help, or encouragement, let alone what we deserve, which is admiration ad respect. One day, the conservative movement will realize what a terrible mistake they have made, and how only callousness and prejudice can explain it. One day.

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