One of the weird privileges of mass intimacy is that you can be deeply moved by the lives of people you’ve never met. That’s what the Dish has been for me for the near decade and a half I’ve been writing and editing it. I almost feel I know people from their email addresses, from countless little virtual exchanges that, over the years, accumulate into a person. And so you can imagine the stream of emotions that was prompted by this one:
I’m sitting here in the airport, about to get on a plane for the first time in over a decade and I wanted to take this moment (flight delayed) to renew my subscription and send along a note of gratitude. As an undocumented immigrant, my American partner and I
have struggled to build a life together over the last 22 years, navigating the myriad legal, social and practical challenges that thousands of other bi-national same sex couples in similar situations have endured.
In recent years, during my more self-pitying moments, when we thought we might never get out of this bind, it was your blog that helped steel my resolve (that and my guy’s preternatural optimism). Your unrelenting, clear-throated accounting of each and every way marriage inequality directly and indirectly impacts gay peoples’ lives has helped me focus, and more clearly see my own circumstances in the greater context. I know, it’s called perspective, but that can be a distant shore when your struggling to stay afloat.
So now, with the fall of DOMA and our subsequent marriage, my husband and I finally come blinking into the light, clutching that small green card, and the first thing I wanted to do was thank you. I owe you a debt of gratitude for helping me get to the airport. Know hope indeed.
Yes, that’s exactly it: you clutch that small green card. And I can remember when I first did.
Today, I absorbed the life-story so far of Michael Sam, and a reader seconded. The case for adopting an abused dog can be found here in some photographs. This bouncy, psychedelic animation feels like your iTunes visualizer just did some crystal meth. I can’t believe they banned the women’s ski jump because of danger to the ovaries … but they did. I surveyed the new social media news landscape, and praised the literary hatchet job (done right).
The most popular posts of the day were both about the struggles of Michael Sam.
See you in the morning.
(Photo: Crape myrtle berries are covered in ice after a rare winter ice storm swept across the South February 12, 2014 in Summerville, South Carolina. More than 400,000 customers have lost power across the Southeast and at least 13 deaths caused by the storm. By Richard Ellis/Getty Images.)
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