In reply to Matthew Dessem.

I'm definitely not accusing you of being on the wrong side of history or anything. But as for "doing anything about it," I think it's the opposite of political savvy to pretend that we, as left-leaning residents of California, even can do much about it. Even with the Prop 8 surprise, it's still a foregone conclusion that our electoral votes are going to Obama; after all, if you believe the post-election analysts, one of the main reasons Prop 8 passed is because it got an unprecedented turn-out from traditionally anti-gay black voters. I'll accept the idea that evangelicals may be more passionately anti-gay than anti-Mormon, but I won't accept the idea that minorities will believe Romney will do more for them than Obama will.

If anything, I'm (mostly jokingly) accusing you of being an enabler, for perpetuating the idea that a toothless, heavily qualified, damage control PR interview on ABC News (which was even there quickly followed by a "let's get onto serious issues") counts as a powerfully symbolic statement. And I still insist that if you're judging it on its merit as a symbolic statement of principle, you cannot bring questions of political risk into it — it's either a statement of conviction, or it's a sound bite. It can't be both. If you're judging it on its merit as a platform or a statement of policy, well good luck, because there is no policy to back it up.

In response to avistew's comment, I started looking for quotes that betrayed LBJ as at least a little bit racist, as a pithy example of "I'd rather have someone say this and institute a federal policy against discrimination, than the opposite." The problem was that all the LBJ quotes re the Civil Rights Act that I could find online were powerful statements in favor of equality, including a condemnation of the KKK. (And he didn't need to talk about his daughters' black friends to make them). So the comparison between Obama's interview and LBJ are even more laughable.

And I lost faith in politics a while back, but not in politicians. Once you've detached yourself from the idea that people with good intentions can work within and/or change the system, you might as well stop pretending to be engaged at all, and acknowledge that you're only looking at it as a game. (Which is why I believe that defending Obama's statement by talking about its political fallout isn't a defense at all, but an accusation). I've prided myself on being able to distinguish BS like Sarah Palin's desperate attempts to portray John Cain as a maverick outsider from someone who's genuinely interested in making a difference. And I thought Obama genuinely was a man of conviction — he made it clear up front that he wasn't as interested in being progressive as he was in backing the country away from the ridiculously polarized partisanship it'd fallen into after the Bush & Clinton years. (Or I guess more accurately, the Karl Rove years).

And by "justice" I mean marriage equality in particular, but civil rights in general. I've been calling it "gay marriage" or "same-sex marriage" all this time (since the law doesn't ask people if they're in love before it gives them a marriage license, so technically two straight guys should be able to get a license, even though that violates the spirit of the institution). But really I should've been calling it marriage equality, since that's what I mean when I say that there's no rational objection: the law doesn't make any demands on heterosexual couples for civil marriage that would disqualify homosexual couples. The end result, of course, is a victory for gay rights, but in the eyes of the law, discrimination based on genitalia is patently unjust.

Which is relevant because for the longest time after I came out, I felt like I was obligated to help other people from having to go through the same BS, which I thought meant winning "hearts and minds." I used to believe I was in some unique position to say, "Yes, I believed in all these stereotypes, and I thought it was a big, scary deal, and I thought it was incompatible with religious belief, and here are all the ways that I was wrong."

But over time, I've realized that a) it doesn't do much good, if any; and 2) it's unnecessary. We obviously didn't end racism before the Civil Rights Act was passed. We obviously didn't end sexism before the 19th Amendment was ratified. Nobody should have to give a rat's ass whether gay marriage is becoming more popular, and nobody should have to care what other people think of them before they can get a civil marriage license. I don't believe anything short of policy at the federal level is going to achieve that. If Romney (and Bush) can pledge a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, then Obama (or Democratic Candidate 2016) can propose one protecting it.

Until then, it's a blatant case of unfair law that's been used as a bargaining chip for decades, and it's been met with nothing but stalling tactics and empty promises that it'll happen when enough people get comfortable with it. I like to think that even if I weren't a homo I'd still be appalled at seeing such an unfair policy kept in place. And I'd be disgusted that a President talks about the need to be considerate of people's religious beliefs when we're talking about United States law, and I'd be disgusted that anyone would say it's an issue that's best left to the majority vote.