I found myself moved nearly to tears yesterday with the SCOTUS decision...
Last edited Sat Jun 27, 2015, 04:18 PM - Edit history (1)
I grew up as a straight male in New Hope, PA. Those of you who are familiar with the town, know that it was euphemistically termed an 'artists' colony which it was...but it was also a place where gay and straight people could easily live side by side and just conduct their lives in the way in which they wished to live. Interestingly and parenthetically, south of New Hope, on Street Road in Bensalem was a little development called Concord Park where mixed race couples could reside without having crosses burned on their lawns routinely. But that is a story for another day.
It really has been a wondrous week but the ruling yesterday reminded me of something my mother of blessed memory said to me a couple years before she passed away. She said that she had lived through remarkable technological advances: Man on the Moon, transistors, television, central air conditioning, mass automobile manufacturing, jet travel, and the like, but that these advances and their exponential rapidity of growth were to be expected as this is how intellectual curiosity combined with capitalist motivations would evolve. But the one thing which shocked her beyond words was the fact that she had been born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, the daughter of an immigrant from the outskirts of Moscow, and that she had lived long enough to see the fall of the Soviet Bloc. This to her was almost unbelievable. Again, parenthetically, she stated that during the process of collapse, the only Western individual who was right on the mark was, and she used to almost gag when she'd say his name, Dick Nixon, who warned of the subterranean issues which would express themselves upon the release of the Communist Yoke. This to her was the moment of her lifetime that was stunning, more than any other.
Well, I know how she felt, because on Friday, I felt the exact same way: that in my lifetime with this Congress, and with the hate-filled biases which seem to be pervasive, this liberation and granting of deserved-rights to a large populus within this country is almost unbelievable to me, although I sensed very recently that the Court would do this since none other than Ted Olson backed it, probably for nefarious reasons of his and his wing of the Republican Party for whom he does his "duty". That being said, I told my child that this is a great moment in the history of the nation; that since women being granted the right to vote in 1920, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills of the 1960's, this seems to happen ever 40-50 years and this was the moment for this generation. It is just remarkable.
So in my youth, I understood the nature of prejudice certainly as a Jewish youth living in a very predominantly WASP area, but the ubiquitous societal discrimination against gays and lesbians I found peculiar, since where I lived, we all "just got along". As I matured, I came to understand much of the psychology of bigotry and hatred and the psychosexual complexities of mankind, including, but not limited to, repression, denial, and irrationality. I want to say that I believe that my early success as a practitioner was due to the fact that the ever-increasing gay and lesbian and now transgender population of my area found comfort here because I clearly made no judgements concerning the sexuality of the individual: nice people were treated nicely and professionally, not nice people were treated professionally and more formally, regardless of their interests elsewhere. I understood the nature of GRID, renamed more accurately AIDS before most in my profession here and helped many through their long-suffering terminal illness which wreaks havoc intraorally, causing great pain and infection. It was a terrible time but they all could find solace here even while many dentists were attempting not to treat these individuals for (ignorant) fear of coming down with the disease themselves. I consider this ongoing era to be one of the most tragic in the history of the world - such immense loss.
It is therefore for me, a singular moment in my existence which has been tied to the Community for virtually my entire life. I'm so pleased for everyone: the individuals, their families, their friends, and for the society in general, which will benefit immensely from this remarkable moment in time. As my When I was young, I never would have believed that I would live long enough to witness and experience this moment.
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I lusted for that place for years. 
Yardley's also got some nice houses, but it too is gentrified now.
-- Mal
