South Africa

As you know I'm not necessarily a big fan of so-called "gay marriage" which would sound to me like a tasteful parody of Brittany and KFed's marriage if it weren't for the fact that their marriage already was a parody.

But South Africa has now legitimized gay marriage, and I suppose it would be churlish of me not to join in the general celebration over it.

The article in today's NYTimes quotes one Melanie Judge, the program manager for OUT, a gay rights advocacy group, as having said some nice things, but she finished with (and this is what struck me).... "Equality does not exist on a sliding scale."

In other words, "separate but equal" is not good enough.

HEY, DIDN'T WE STRIKE DOWN "SEPERATE BUT EQUAL" IN "BROWN vs. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION"?

Well, not quite. Isn't "seperate but equal" exactly what the New Jersey Supreme Court recently suggested in it's namby-pamby decision ordering the legislature to "do something" to "make things equalish" between straight couples and gay couples.

Boy, that'll bring us right up to 1954, won't it?

I suppose I should be grateful (for f*cking crumbs). It IS a better world for gay people than it was in, oh, say, 1964, when I was in high school. We still get the crap beat out of us but at least we have a chance to have our day in court, provided we make a big enough stink about it.

So yesterday South Africa, a country which up until a decade or so ago was still living in America's 18th Century, made a dramatic leap past us, into the 21st Century.

South Africa is a wonderful place to be black these days.

Gay, too!