Mark Morford, who writes an editorial column in the San Francisco Chronicle, has written a column about the big (anti-gay) controversy over the new Harvey Milk stamp. He is witty (as usual) and delightfully humorous. I'm just sorry that I can only reproduce a portion of it here. But, you most definitely should go over to the sfgate to read it in its entirety.
From SFGate:
What do you do? How do you handle it when, for example, every major corporation, tech startup, first-world country, habitable city, educated human and friendly coffee shop in the land supports gay rights and women’s choice, immigration and health care reform, gun bans and climate science?
How do you purchase anything at all – food, a home, a cellphone, a car, Xanax – when every grocery store and manufacturer in America supports causes and civil rights you are supposed to detest to the point of shouting in the streets and crumbling in fear?
In short, what do you do when the reality of the civilized world doesn’t match up with your agonizingly pinched demands of same?
You have to be careful. You have to watch that your life doesn’t shrivel down to near-meaninglessness, to a thin running joke, down to the size of, say, a postage stamp – such as the one recently released by the United States Postal Service, that well-known bastion of sodomy, depravity and all that’s wrong with the world.
I mean, right? They must be, given how their new stamp features the historic, grinning mug of SF’s own beloved supervisor, gay rights activist and Sean Penn Academy Award, Harvey Milk.
Did you miss the announcement about the new Milk stamp? You night have, given how the USPS announcing a new stamp is like IBM announcing a new Selectric typewriter. Sweet, sad and sort of quaint, all at once.
But did you also miss the tiny hiss of outrage about the Milk stamp, too? Did you read about the even more quaint pulings of the members of backwater Christian fundamentalist clan known as the American Family Association? Because it’s something special indeed:
Honoring predator Harvey Milk on a U.S. postage stamp is disturbing to say the least. Harvey Milk was a very disreputable man and used his charm and power to prey on young boys with emotional problems and drug addiction. He is the last person we should be featuring on a stamp.
… is what they sneered, in a press release, to anyone who would listen, which was almost no one.
And, what should you do if you find yourself in such a position?
Again, from the column:
When your life is reduced to announcing that you will hereby refuse any and all postal mail sent your way if upon said piece of mail is stuck a tiny, 1″ depiction of a slain gay activist, civic leader and Medal of Freedom recipient, when you openly revolt against the staid, conservative USPS – whose two subsequent, post-Milk stamps have commemorated Hot Rods and Nevada’s statehood – well, it might be time to take a step back.
Regroup. Slap yourself upside the soul. Ask yourself, “Really? It’s come down to this? I’m actually expending part of my life, my prana, my finite number of breaths and heartbeats rejecting bits of paper mailed to me because they might honor a rather amazing human who fought for love in another part of the country nearly 40 years ago? And won?”
Of course, asking these questions would imply a certain level of self awareness and complexity of thought not normally attributed to conservative groups, or homophobes, or anti-philatelists. It would also imply that you and your fundamentalist friends might not have yet realized the battle – and soon the war – against gay marriage, and progress, and love, have essentially been lost. Forever.
Don’t you already know? Sure you do. Isn’t that why you’re wailing so hard in the first place?