Dichroic Reflections

What's that I hear?

This
made me leak happy

tears.

href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/
20040217/ts_nm/rights_gays_sanfra

ncisco_dc?>This on the other
hand just raised my blood pressure a bit (the first and last few

paragraphs, anyway). I don't know exactly why this particular issue
has such resonance for me as to

affect bodily fluids (blood and
tear) but it does. On a lot of the other issues I care about, like

gender and racial equality, the major battles have been won and
we're into the post-war rebuilding.

Just as with shooting war, the
postwar reconstruction can be harder than the actual battle, but it

tends to have a tidal inexorability. It may be slow, and it's very
far from complete, but it's

happening; all I have to do is look at
the numbers of women in my company with good jobs, or the

interracial couples I see whenever I walk around the mall to see
proof. (It's true and regrettable

that proof of how far we have to
go yet is almost as easy to find, in reports of hate crimes or of

underpaid women and minorities. But it's not so long since that
counterproof was allthere was

to find.)

What's
happening with gay marriages looks to me like a tidal flood. When it's legalized
in the

Netherlands and Canada, fought in the courts of
Massachusetts, legislated in Vermont and done in

rebellion in
California all within the space of a few years, that's not happenstance, that's
history.

There are bitter battles yet to be fought; right now we're
only at the stage of the lunch-counter

sit-ins and the Freedom
Riders, but I smell change on the wind.

And yet no revolution is just
like its predecessors. I have not yet seen any leaders like MLK or even

Malcolm rising up. What I have seen is any number of leaders on a
smaller local level, from Mayor

Newsom of San Francisco to the
couples filing suit with the Massachusetts Supreme Court. It will be interesting
to see how this plays out, but it's too much of a tidal wave for me to believe we
won't be left with some real change.

What's that I hear
now ringing in my ear

I hear it more and more

It's the sound of
freedom calling

Ringing up to the sky

It's the sound of the old ways
falling

You can hear it if you try

You can hear it if you
try