Alone and Unobserved

Last week, the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. This is an especially wonderful moment for me, because, in a way, it undoes whatever damage I did by helping fight for Proposition 22 in 2000. That’s right: I, a gay man, campaigned to pass a referendum designed to keep gay couples from marrying in the State of California. In my defense, I was young, very Mormon, very self-hating, and about to leave for two years on a Mormon mission. Our church leaders were urging us to join the fight, and I was happy to oblige.

During the strongest push for the referendum, I attended a debate on the issue at the local community college. The “No on 22″ side was represented by a very gay man (boo!) and the “Yes on 22″ folks were represented by Bonnie Park, a fellow Mormon and school-board member who had achieved some notoriety in the ’90s as the proponent of “Sex Respect,” an abstinence-only sex-ed program (yay!). I remember raising my hand a few times and asking that misguided gay man some tough questions, and feeling superior when he wasn’t able to say more than “Gay marriage is already against the law! Why a referendum to ban it?”

Looking back, I’m ashamed at how I put him on the spot. Maybe he should have been more prepared (after all, in my conservative Southern California community, he should have expected tough questions) but he also had a point: Bonnie Park and her allies (including me) were striking out, not at gay marriage—which was already against the law—but at “the gays” and “the gay agenda.” And now conservatives are rallying again, around the same standard: gays want special rights, they have an agenda, they’re promiscuous, they’re filthy, their relationships don’t last, don’t matter, don’t count.

Conservatives don’t respect sex. They fear it. They are deeply, desperately afraid of it. They fear any deviation from the norms they have ordered their lives by, because if those norms are arbitrary then their entire lives have been a lie. But I refuse to coddle them and their childish refusal to see the truth. Sex is something every person has to confront, and part of being a grown-up is coming to terms with one’s sexuality and deciding how to express it. It is time the conservatives grew up. It is time for this nation to grow up.

Part of growing up is accepting the truth, and the truth is this: Gay people are here. Gay people matter. And gay relationships count.