Politicians are playing catch-up on gay marriage
By Richard Cohen, WashPost, Published: April 1
We have all become political hacks. We are all engaged in the back and forth of politics, the jot or tittle of the process, the meaningless cable chatter of it all, the sameness of it all, be it conservative or liberal, so we lose sight of principle and of right and wrong. This is how we hardly noticed that basically all of American politics acquiesced in the demonization of gays and lesbians.
This occurred to me last week when the New York Times published an account of how in 1996 President Clinton, in the dead of a Washington night, signed the odious Defense of Marriage Act, a bill whose very title was an Orwellian lie. The bill had ripped through the House and Senate, garnering yeas from all but one House Republican and most Democrats. On the GOP side of the aisle were surely men and women who were voting their heartfelt ignorance and irrational fear, but on the Democratic side were those who were simply holding their noses — selling out, as we used to say.
Oh, there were exceptions. Jane Harman, who in 1994 had won her Republican-leaning California congressional district by a mere 812 votes, denounced it from the floor and voted a principled nay. On the Senate side, Virginia’s Chuck Robb put his career on the line and became the only Southerner to vote against this piece of homophobic nonsense. Then . . . then nothing. Clinton signed the thing at 1 a.m. on a Saturday when all of Washington, with the possible exception of the always restless Newt Gingrich, was asleep. In a sense, the town never woke up.
Around this time, an odd thing was happening: On television, gays were starting to commonly appear, and when they did, they seemed no different than heterosexuals. On “Roseanne,” “Will and Grace,” “Glee,” “The New Normal” and other shows, gays were depicted as, well, normal. The archetypal threat of yore, the alleged despoiler of innocent youth, turns out to be a virtual Rotarian — so ordinary, so prosaic, so bloody boring.
(More here.)
We have all become political hacks. We are all engaged in the back and forth of politics, the jot or tittle of the process, the meaningless cable chatter of it all, the sameness of it all, be it conservative or liberal, so we lose sight of principle and of right and wrong. This is how we hardly noticed that basically all of American politics acquiesced in the demonization of gays and lesbians.
This occurred to me last week when the New York Times published an account of how in 1996 President Clinton, in the dead of a Washington night, signed the odious Defense of Marriage Act, a bill whose very title was an Orwellian lie. The bill had ripped through the House and Senate, garnering yeas from all but one House Republican and most Democrats. On the GOP side of the aisle were surely men and women who were voting their heartfelt ignorance and irrational fear, but on the Democratic side were those who were simply holding their noses — selling out, as we used to say.
Oh, there were exceptions. Jane Harman, who in 1994 had won her Republican-leaning California congressional district by a mere 812 votes, denounced it from the floor and voted a principled nay. On the Senate side, Virginia’s Chuck Robb put his career on the line and became the only Southerner to vote against this piece of homophobic nonsense. Then . . . then nothing. Clinton signed the thing at 1 a.m. on a Saturday when all of Washington, with the possible exception of the always restless Newt Gingrich, was asleep. In a sense, the town never woke up.
Around this time, an odd thing was happening: On television, gays were starting to commonly appear, and when they did, they seemed no different than heterosexuals. On “Roseanne,” “Will and Grace,” “Glee,” “The New Normal” and other shows, gays were depicted as, well, normal. The archetypal threat of yore, the alleged despoiler of innocent youth, turns out to be a virtual Rotarian — so ordinary, so prosaic, so bloody boring.
(More here.)
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