I thought it was fun enough, but, sadly, Matt Klam doesn’t seem to grasp how deeply revolutionary the new medium is beginning to be. It was also skewed toward the leftward part of the blogosphere – and it failed to distinguish adequately enough, I thought, between blogs that are journalistic and those that are blatantly activist. It’s not that DailyKos or FreeRepublic are “nastier”; it’s that they’re unabashedly partisan, help organize politics as well as comment on it. But, hey, there’s plenty of space for all kinds of blogs; and no piece can cover it all. The good news is that I think we may have reached a blogging tipping point in terms of public awareness. This piece helps advance that. And it was a jolly read.
NOW, NOVA SCOTIA: Yet another Canadian province allows gays to marry. I know this sounds esoteric, but Canada does make a difference here for the U.S. It’s country deeply intermeshed with this one; it is relatively easy for gay couples to go there, get married and come back with an even deeper sense of their own equality. And the psychological impact of having your relationship affirmed and supported is profound. The truth is: there is no real struggle over whether gays will get married in this country. They are and they will. Gay marriage is a social fact. What is disputed is whether society will accord these relationships any legal validity, whether such couples will live constantly with the threat of their de facto marriages being derailed by the meddling of hostile relatives, using Republican-sponsored law to undermine them and break them up. Canada and the rest of the civilized world adds a huge amount of weight to the gay side of the debate. It shows gay couples that many parts of America are the exception, not the rule. And the idea of marriage as both imaginable and a right will percolate down to the next gay generation and make marriage seem a no-brainer. That goes for younger straights, as well, who already have very few issues with two dudes loving each other and living together as a married couple. What I’m saying, I guess, is that this social movement is unstoppable. All you can do is persecute, harass and marginalize those who are a part of it. But you can’t stop them loving one another, or committing to each other, or getting actual marriage licenses (from Canada) that will reinforce the revolution. For a long time, I urged conservatives to co-opt this social change rather than resist it. For the most part, I failed. But the real victims of this, in the very long run, will not be gays. It will be conservatives.
The Dish 