The reason the civil rights movement for gay equality under the law has been so successful so swiftly is because gay people have an army of allies: our families. Among the most powerful advocates in particular are relatively conservative families of gay people. The following story can be replicated in many, many ways in many, many places. It may even move the New York Senate:
Teresa R. Sayward did not hesitate when she rose from her seat on Tuesday night to address her colleagues in the State Assembly. An observant Catholic from a small, conservative upstate town, she had rarely shared the story of her son, Glenn, 42, and his struggle to come to terms with his gay identity decades ago.
But she said the occasion — a chance to make New York the second state in the country to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage — called for a highly personal approach.
"We would spend long nights crying together and talking," she told a full house of hushed lawmakers. "And one night I said to him, ‘You have to be what you are; you can’t be what people think you should be.’"
Th goal of the movement: to enlarge the space in which people can be fully themselves. And that includes straight people.
The Dish 