Mural at the back of The Center Long Beach.
Pretty much everyone knows that, like it or not, same-sex marriage will be a commonplace facet of the future. President Obama’s recent statement of support for the practice is one more stepping stone to that destination.
That progress is sure to add an extra dash of festivity to the festivities this weekend, culminating Sunday with Long Beach’s annual Gay Pride Parade. They’re here, they’re getting closer to enjoying societal equality — get used to it.
I never miss the parade, though not so much out of a need to show my support for the LGBT community. I go because it’s beautiful. I meet up at a certain spot on Ocean Boulevard with a group of friends (hetero-, homo-, and bi-) and pay a lot more attention to the people around me than to the parade itself. It’s a beautiful environment because it’s explicitly all-inclusive. Call me a hippie or a libtard, but I’ve got a hard-on for togetherness and equality.
The rainbow is a fitting symbol for the LGBT community, idealizing the notion that every day all of us are bathed in light composed of the entire color spectrum. It’s a way of seeing that dovetails with the best of American self-reflexivity: e pluribus unum, the Great American Melting Pot, “United we stand, divided we fall.”
You disagree. You think society’s increasing tolerance of same-sex coupledom is contributing to the ruination of this once-great nation. You feel marriage is under attack. You know that homosexuality is just plain wrong.
You’re certainly entitled to such a belief set. But let me guess: you’ve had rather little direct contact with the LGBT community. Your feelings on the subject align very closely to your parents’ feelings. The vast majority of your exposure to gay people comes from television and the movies. You cannot empirically substantiate a correlation between the success of the gay agenda and the failure of the United States. Gay people have never done a damn thing to you.
Of course, there may be exceptions in your case. Gay people are like everybody else, and so it’s far from impossible that someone with a same-sex preference did something bad to you. You may have a gay relative you’ve seen struggle with his/her sexuality (although dollars to doughnuts said struggle occurred within a milieu (e.g., church) that’s pounded into his head the message that he’s supposed to struggle with same-sex sexuality because it’s sin or sickness). You may have even experienced feelings of attraction to those of your gender but managed to suppress them.
But on the whole, those most opposed to LGBT equality are those with the least contact with LGBT community members. It’s the same old story: Prejudice usually emanates from ignorance. More often than not, increased exposure to the object of prejudice leads to decreased prejudice.
That’s why I’d like to extend a personal invitation for all of you reading these words and disagreeing with their spirit to join us on Ocean Boulevard on Sunday beginning at 11 a.m. Are you going see some things that make you uncomfortable? Undoubtedly (although it’s not as if there’s gay porn going on). But as anyone who’s had experience with generalized anxiety knows all too well, a feeling of discomfort is not necessarily indicative of the existence of an external problem. Sometimes the discomfort is the disease.
What you are guaranteed to find on Sunday is acceptance, inclusiveness, people of all stripes coming together to enjoy each other’s company. It’s a vibration that might tickle your soul in spite of your discomfort and preconceptions. (Plus, there’s plenty of spectacle and people-watching, which in my book always makes for fun.)
I have been accused repeatedly of using this space to forward my gay agenda. (I’m not gay, but whatever.) But it’s really not true. I don’t want anything special for the LGBT community. I don’t want homosexuals to have any rights, privileges, security, or opportunities that heterosexuals don’t enjoy.
But I damn well don’t think they ought to have less. Call me a patriot, but I take seriously the constitutional ideal that all persons are equal in the eyes of the law, with equal entitlement to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States of America is and always has been an experiment in equality and inclusiveness, a place where those with minority opinions, beliefs, and even (gasp!) lifestyles are tolerated by those of us safely ensconced within the majority — tolerated not by virtue of our benevolence, but as the institutional norm.
God knows the experiment always has been — and always will be — a work in progress, and that American history is scarred with spectacular missteps (slavery, women not being allowed to vote) on the journey to fully realizing an egalitarian state of existence. But we are closer than we’ve ever been. And we’ll move closer still.
Come join us — even if for just one day — and see what happens. Don’t worry: homosexuality isn’t contagious! But love and acceptance? Maybe, if we’re lucky….
A detail from the mural.