Jonathan Rauch: “We are a sideshow no longer”

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http://www.salon.com/2012/05/15/jonathan_rauch_we_are_a_sideshow_no_longer/




It’s a beautiful spring day in Washington, D.C., around 5 p.m. I am arriving at the august Peterson Institute for International Economics. Today, however, the place is not a think tank but a chapel, and the important words to be uttered are not “trade-weighted exchange rates” but “I do.”

My old friend Joe Gagnon is getting married today to Paul Adamczak, his longtime partner. How I hate that word “partner”! As if Joe and Paul were members of the same law firm. Within the hour, I am pleased to realize, they will be partners no longer. Under District of Columbia law, they will be husbands.

Today’s ceremony is freighted with extra excitement. Only three days ago, President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. The subject is much discussed here at the wedding. Of course, as an invitee mentions, Obama’s endorsement alters not a jot of law, not a tittle of policy. Yet a cultural barrier has been crossed, a taboo forever retired. The highest officer in the land and, by extension, his political party and half the country have embraced today’s ceremony as their own. We are a sideshow, an outlier, no longer.

The think tank’s auditorium is transformed by draperies, flowers, gentle lighting, rows of plush chairs. Lovely. It occurs to me, as I reflect on the week’s events, that only one decoration is missing. An American flag would be very much in order.




***personally, i don't think a president can make the cultural 'sideshow' aspect go away.

when we as a group decided, in san francisco, in new york - where ever we were and threw off the cultural stigmas hung on us -- it ended then and there.