(A Five-Year-Old Article Worth Revisiting Today)
By ADAM GOODHEART for The New York Times back on Nov. 23, 2003
A year ago, I moved out of the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, the heart of the city's substantial ''gay ghetto,'' where I'd spent most of the past decade. In Dupont Circle -- a mile or so from the White House -- the sight of same-sex couples holding hands is a common one, and by the time I left, it no longer surprised me to see two men pushing a baby carriage.
When I resettled in a small town across the Chesapeake Bay, on the rural eastern shore of Maryland, some of my friends -- straight and gay alike -- worried that I was moving to enemy territory, to a place where, as an openly gay man, I'd be shunned, or worse. But I quickly discovered that there are plenty of gays and lesbians here, too. You won't see couples holding hands on High Street, but a quiet tolerance prevails; when two men held their commitment ceremony in a nearby farming town a few weeks ago, there were no protesters, just 200 guests on hand to celebrate.
Now, with both liberals and conservatives girding for a cultural Armageddon over gay marriage and gay rights, the battle lines are being staked out not just in the courts and legislatures, but also in places like this. Perhaps more than any other national political struggle since the Civil War, the fight for gay equality has been waged community by community and family by family. Last Tuesday's ruling by Massachusetts' highest court in favor of gay marriage will put personal relationships as well as political principles to an unprecedented test.
The rapidly growing acceptance and visibility of gays and lesbians over the past 30 years can be explained by simple exponential math: each person who comes out of the closet brings at least some of his friends and family over to the pro-gay camp, and this in turn makes it easier for others to live openly. It's a phenomenon alien to the politics of race; rarely, alas, does a racist wake up one morning to discover that he has an African-American son or brother.
The most difficult obstacle that the foes of gay marriage face is that no matter how they choose to frame their side of the debate -- ''traditional family values,'' ''defense of marriage,'' ''our Judeo-Christian heritage'' -- they will be pitting a mere abstraction against millions of very real people across America who have told their friends and relatives and co-workers that they are gay.
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