in today's New York Times. In his column, titled Gay Marriage's Moment, he provides you with a history of gay rights, and a forceful argument that the recognition of marriage equality is something that has (a) been a VERY long road, and (b) is a matter of simple justice.
After beginning by reminding us of the societal reaction to AIDS, and pivoting to the forthcoming Obergfell decision, which may well recognize full marriage equality (if Justice Anthony Kennedy remains consistent with his previous jurisprudence), he writes:
Many Americans still oppose that. And some will argue, as they routinely do, that it has been forced on them much too quickly and that history can’t be rewritten in an instant.
Too quickly? An instant?
And then he is off - to provide us with a succinct but thorough history of which too many are too unaware.
For example,
Nothing about it feels quick if you consider that Evan Wolfson, a chief architect of the political quest for same-sex marriage, wrote a thesis on the topic at Harvard Law School in 1983, or if you remember how passionately the issue of same-sex marriage was debated in the 1990s, when the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was passed.
Please continue below the cheese doodle.
Bruni notes that when he wrote his first column for The Times in 2011 New York had just become the 6th state to legalize gay marriage, and now the count is 37 and DC. It might be a dizzying pace, but as he writes
But it’s not so dizzying or difficult to comprehend when you think about the simple logic behind same-sex marriage: You can’t relegate the commitments and loves of an entire group of Americans to a different category, marked by a little pink asterisk, without saying that we ourselves don’t measure up. You can’t tell us that you consider us equal and then put perhaps the central, most important relationship in our lives in an unequal box. It’s a non sequitur and a nonstarter.
He talks about what is now the severe divide on this topic between the major figures of our two major parties, with Democrats characterizing He writes
A Supreme Court judgment for marriage equality wouldn’t be a rash swerve into uncharted terrain. It would merely be a continuation of the journey of gay Americans — of all Americans — across familiar land, in the direction of justice. It would be a stride toward the top of the hill.
And he takes us back to what too many Americans do not know - how long this struggle has been, even well before Stonewall in 1969, going back at least 50 years.
Then there is this:
Alfred Kinsey told Americans in the late 1940s just how common same-sex activity was. The Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights groups, appeared in 1950, in Los Angeles. The Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian political organization, appeared in 1955, in San Francisco.
From those seeds, the legalization of same-sex marriage flowered, and no shortage of harsh winters intervened.
He concludes this column by turning to Edie Windsor, whose law suit started the rush towards what we may well soon see.
Here are his final two paragraphs:
She was married in Canada in 2007. When her wife first proposed to her, she gave Windsor a brooch instead of a ring, so that the diamond didn’t prompt questions from co-workers.
That was in 1967: nearly half a century ago. So don’t tell her that the idea of same-sex marriage needs more time to ripen.
I am a straight man, married to a straight women now for 29 going on 30 years, having been together for 40 going on 41. We do not feel our marriage is anyway threatened by the marriages of any other couples, be they interreligious, "interracial", of different national origins, of siginificant age differences (I am almost 11 years older), or of the same gender.
It is long past due that the United State recognize what so many other nations have already recognized, and that I first heard succinctly from an 8th grade African-American student whose father was a socially conservative evangelical Black minister, these words expressed in 1997:
"I don't understand why this is such a big deal. Aren't my gay and lesbian friends as equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness as I am?"
Go read Bruni's column.