Talking kindly about that gay person.

There is no question that Obama could have done more regarding the support of same-sex marriage- Equally, he could have done less. There is no question that he let many opportunities slip by for health, education, welfare, and the economy. For too many Americans, 'all men have equal rights as long as those rights are for 'all their kind'... for the rest (which includes our LGBT community) we are barely cattle from whose meat they only care about the profit per pound.'

When people have a strong belief which, when proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be wrong, they hold on to their beliefs even stronger. Our community is not immune to this. The Obama statement is similar to knowing someone who knows someone who is gay, however here they are talking kindly about that gay person. It is a small step only for those who are still open to 'All men (and women) being equal under the law.' Splintering away and voting against a 'a more probable' good, or throwing a vote away in spite, or not voting at all indicates one of two possibilities. 1) The person has an inability to think independently and gives themselves over to malevolence created by others. 2) The person who has so little an opinion of themselves as to believe that they don't matter.

I'm sad to admit that I believe part of our community's real equality is this- the same percentile of wrongdoers in every other group are in ours. We are the intelligent and the stupid, the kind and the evil, the thoughtful and the hateful, and we too can be our own worst enemy. As a group our only hope is unity. There is strength in numbers just as assuredly as absolute power corrupts absolutely. The corruptive power is now with the Supreme Court. If they decide that equal rights is a states issue, or that any group can be excluded from full unequivocal equal rights under the law then all is lost. The constitution, the bill of rights, even the declaration of independence will have become like so many other ideas that can and have been subverted by past societies- left to wither away to become a footnote to be learned from... until they too find the convenience to stop learning.