Sunday morning reflections

SPOILER ALERT: This post will be about gay stuff, so if that makes you uncomfortable, thanks for dropping by and I hope to see you later. BTW, if gay news does make you uncomfortable, you really might want to read this anyway.

1) Helen forwarded a link to a New York Times article about the Irish campaign for marriage equality. It is worth reading and the video is certainly worth watching all the way to the end. Click on the link and watch this if you have not already seen it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/world/europe/for-one-irish-couple-backing-gay-marriage-is-a-matter-of-family-values.html?_r=0

2) A few years ago, before marriage equality had spread to more than two or three states, I realized how many same sex married couples I already knew. 

[I also realized how many of those guys were named Steven/Stephen. For those not in the know, that is a pop cultural reference to  Steel Magnolias.] 

Many of them had gone to Canada to get married before it was legal anywhere here. And even though I am gay, that doesn't mean that everyone I know is gay. I probably do know more than many people, but then again, many people have no idea that some of their friends and relatives are gay. Polls show that Americans usually vastly over-estimate the number of LGBT citizens, but they also tend to under-estimate the number of gays they know themselves. Until full equality arrives -- if ever! Ask black Americans how that's working for them a half century after the Civil Rights Act -- many LGBT folks will continue to choose to remain closeted. After all, you can still get fired for being gay in most states in the Land of the Free, and school kids open themselves to brutal bullying by being open. 

3) Finally, and building on those point, you know the 6-degrees-of-separation thing: you are only six degrees of separation from any other person in the world. That is, mathematically, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows AnyOne-You-Can-Name. (I like to point out that if you know me, you are only a step away from Pope Benedict -- whom I met in Rome -- and therefore only two steps away from Pope Francis. Tom knows Barack, so if you know me, you are two steps away from the President of the United States. And so on.) So everyone today is only a few degrees, maybe only one or two, from a married gay couple. 

Welcome to the New World!

PS -- Still fighting marriage equality? That ship has sailed. Just ask the Catholic bishops of Ireland.