Like many of you, I am truly frustrated with many of my liberal compadres who hoped for nearly instant gratification after Senator Barack Obama became President Barack Obama. I don’t have to tell you how absurd it is to expect years and years of conservative damage to be repaired, reversed and rejected in just a couple of years, particularly in the face of perhaps the most daunting headwind of political opposition ever experienced by a new president bolstered by an historic use of the filibuster. Add to that the rather surprising (at least to me) hostility from so many vocal people on the left and it’s nothing short of a miracle that President Obama has gotten done all of the things he has achieved.
Realistic people know that political change takes time. It takes perserverence. It takes dedication. During the civil rights struggle, Dr. King told us:
“I’ve seen the promised land. I might not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.”
He knew that there was no way around the obstacles that people of color faced, they had to go through them. No shortcuts were possible and only staying the course and continuing to work hard toward the goal was going to ensure success.
And that, of course, is where we are today. There are no shortcuts. We simply will need to keep working toward our goals. The Republicans will surely fight us every step of the way and just when we think they have sunk as low as they can go, they will find an even deeper mud hole to wallow in as they do everything they can to take us backwards.
But sometimes, every once in awhile, you get a glimmer of hope that we are winning. Today is one of those days.
Louis J. Marinelli is one of the original founders of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). NOM is a virulent anti-gay, anti-LGBT group committed to preventing any progress in LGBT rights and to stamping out any gains already made. Today, he made a powerful statement with a blog entry titled I now support full marriage equality
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Having spent the last five years putting all of my political will, interest and energy into fighting against the spread of same-sex marriage as if it were a contagious disease, I must admit that it is hard for me to put the following text into words let alone utter them with my own voice.Whether it is an issue of disbelief, shame or embarrassment, the one thing that is for sure is that I have come to this point after several months of an internal conflict with myself. That conflict gradually tore away at me until recently when I was able to for the first time simply admit to myself that I do in fact support civil marriage equality.
~SNIP~
One article I wrote, towards the end of October, 2010 caught the attention of a blogger by the name of RJ, who writes on the blog AmIWorking. He responded to my article about the homosexual agenda with an article addressed personally to me regarding marriage equality. In short, his article had the miraculous effect of instantly putting things into prospective for me.
At that point, between what I had witnessed on the marriage tour and RJ’s post about marriage equality, I really came to understand that gays and lesbians were just real people who wanted to live real lives and be treated equally as opposed to, for example, wanting to destroy American culture. No, they didn’t want to destroy American culture, they wanted to openly particulate in it. I was well on my way to becoming a supporter of civil marriage equality.
~SNIP~
…Christians and Catholics alike are well within their right to demand that holy matrimony, a sacrament and service performed by the Church and recognized by the Church, remains between a man and a woman as their faith would dictate. However, that has nothing to do with civil marriage, performed and recognized by the State in accordance with state law.
My name is Louis J. Marinelli, a conservative-Republican and I now support full civil marriage equality. The constitution calls for nothing less.
This did not happen overnight. If you read the piece, you realize that even this single man’s epiphany took time; his worldview evolving over several years until he was forced to confront the inconsistencies in his belief system.
We progressives ARE winning. The strides are rarely huge but the progression over time is. We need to recognize this because it gives us hope and sustains us through difficult times.
And I think that’s very, very important.
I’m just sayin’…
