Numbers

When the NY Times began to add same-sex couples to their reporting of weddings (or other similar ceremonies), one of things that struck me was the difference between the pedigree information of straight couples vs. those of lesbian and gay couples. It seemed, even to me, a little odd that two guys or two women with unremarkable jobs or educational backgrounds or parental achievements made it past the editors. I realize that there is a great deal of elitism out there - sometimes epitomized by the NY Times in years past - but the Times is read nationally and internationally so I tend to forgive it when it looks like it's pandering to elite straight couples and not-so-elite same sex couples. I have noticed that the Times is beginning to apply the same standards to both groups.

It may be entirely frivolous to even notice these kinds of things but it is meaningful to me. Our close friends - two doctors who had been together for 22 years before their marriage in Massachusetts - took the time to go through the process of noting their marriage in the Times. I thought it was important because younger same-sex couples or someone who is gay but isolated in a non-coastal community could see that many of us live very similar lives to straight couples.

I am certainly not advocating that same-sex couples go out of their way to copy their straight friends' relationships, even if it were possible to do so. I am, however, advocating that more of us pull back the curtains and fight for the right to have every option that everyone else has. We live in a civil society based on laws that are sometimes unconstitutional. Religious conservatives will continue to block or chip away at what I and many others consider to be universal civil rights. The struggle for full equality is a team effort and some of us will lose a job, a friend or a family member's acceptance when we stand up to be counted. I was lucky to have had no real problems in the aftermath of my coming out experience. Maybe I just thought that whatever risk there might have been was outweighed by the possibility that one more name on the list would help move things along a little bit. On a more personal level, it can be very freeing all by itself.

In the roughly 20 years that have passed since then, it is clearer than ever to me that the most important way to achieve equality is to have as many people as possible demand it. There is a reason that activists are accused of inflating the number of marchers that appear in D.C. and that the government is accused of minimizing those numbers. There would be no argument if both sides did not believe that numbers matter. Who among us can say that the civil rights movement to end racial and ethnic discrimination would have been as effective if there were not millions of people publicly demanding it? Dr. Martin Luther King understood this very well. A beautifully delivered speech is impressive but King's 1963 speech was delivered on television with powerful images of many hundreds of thousands of supporters. The Kennedy administration was undoubtedly moved by the speech but what it really looked for was how much support it would have to begin drafting the law that became the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We can't deny that democratic institutions are swayed by numbers and the laws under which we live originally come from voters who put men and women in positions of power to pass new ones or change old ones. The Obama administration is no different. It knows that their success in support of us depends to a large extent on our open support of them, including support on issues that do not touch us in the same way as basic civil rights do.

If you haven't already, speak up. It often works.