A reader writes:
I am a 27-year-old gay man, and consider(ed) myself very post-gay and post-marriage since I came out (late, a few years ago). I thought that if society didn't accept me, I would define my relationships myself, that I would forge a new world, a new type of relationship. Two decades ago (if I weren't seven), I would have been on the side that opposed you in your marriage fight.
But I'll be damned if hearing the stories of this battle that began years before I was born, reading the reactions, and in particular, seeing that video of you in 1997 and reading your posts yesterday haven't cracked something inside me.
You talk about this being a generally conservative movement, that it is about people in love wanting expansion of a traditional institution to them. But no one talks about the influence this has on single gay men. For the first time since I came out, I feel forced to look at the fact that I am not just in this for dating, for sex. Maybe if I were older, I would already have an identity hardened against being defined by society, and it would not matter so much. But we are on the way to a world where society will accept my relationships, and I will not be able to use outsider status as an excuse for any behavior.
Traditionalists will fight this tooth and nail, but the last great joke will be how much this gives them what they want.
I waver between a deep gratitude to New York for accepting me, and being spiteful for making me grow up. But I suspect that the former emotion will be the lasting one.
The Dish 