Out of all the gay couples in all the towns in Wisconsin

My friend Steve asked how Tom and I happened to be chosen for the interview. He wondered if we knew someone at the station. You may have wondered the same thing.

For several years, Tom was chair of the LGBT Caucus of the state Democratic Party. When the Court overturned DOMA in 2013 in the Windsor case, he was interviewed by a local newspaper and that article (click on that link if you want to read it) was carried by many of the Wisconsin papers. That is how his name cropped up when they were looking for someone to interview, someone away from Madison and the politics of the capital. So we were the country mice they chose.

As for knowing anyone at the station -- if we had, we would have demanded more than 60 seconds of a two-minute segment! (Not really.) The reporter recorded about twenty minutes of interview. Of course, this shows how little content one gets on news programs in general. A half-hour show is ten minutes commercials. So our little segment was 10 percent of the twenty minutes available.

Anyway, we survived. My favorite response so far is this email from Tom’s daughter Lucy:

“you should be selling interviews, you could make a killing.....if you don't find these two sympathetic then you hate AMERICA, FARMS AND JESUS, perfect hook!” 

Jesus?

Oh, yeah. After that 2013 newspaper interview, our mailbox was smashed twice in the same week. The only real hostility we have ever experienced. And it could have been coincidence. Other mailboxes along our road are smashed from time to time. I have to remember post hoc not necessarily propter hoc. (A logical principle that just because A happens after B, that does not prove that B caused A.)