Sullivan: Calm Down

Andrew Sullivan appeals for cool heads:

Calm down. We are not experiencing a massive, permanent backlash.

The next generation overwhelmingly backs the right to marry, and there is no sign of cultural reversal, even if we have suffered some electoral set-backs. If Obama has taught us anything, it is to keep our eyes on the prize, and not always to react impulsively to hatred, bigotry or simple ignorance by exaggerating its power over us. We are winning. We lost this one, by an excruciatingly small margin. . . . One thing we need to remember is dignity in defeat. That's how it becomes victory.

And we need patience and relentlessness in explaining our lives. And how human they are. It's not fair; we should have it all already. But we don't. And in a democracy, that means persuasion, not fiat.

Hear, hear. And really, your Head Trucker believes it's not at all a bad thing for us to trod the same thorny path that Martin Luther King and all the civil-rights marchers of the 1960's did: taking our case to the people, to the legislatures, to Congress, winning hearts and minds and votes one by one, face to face, person to person.

Then when victory does come, it will come by overwhelming popular support. We will have earned it; and no one will be able to say, not by any stretch of the imagination, that we foisted equal rights on the country.

Because the country will already have embraced equal rights for us queer people. And that's a good thing, in the long run. Slower. But better. In lots of ways.

So let's get to work on it. Protests are fine for right now, it relieves the angry pressure and lets us vent our condign anger on those organizations who would deny us our fundamental human rights. But the real work begins tomorrow: winning votes and voters in the timeworn democratic fashion, one mind, one heart at a time.