The stunning result of Tuesday’s presidential election stands as a chilling reminder of the work ahead. After eight years of President Obama’s fierce advocacy, we grew complacent. We assumed that since a bare majority of straight Supreme Court justices voted our way on marriage that the fight was over. We were wrong.
The United States remains a deeply sexist, racist, homophobic culture and undoing and overcoming those prejudices will take more than filing a few well-timed lawsuits. Realizing those cultural changes takes generations and most of us won’t see the end of that road in our lifetimes. For those of us who remember when gay people were hated and persecuted during the onset of the AIDS epidemic — or those older still who remember the height of the Civil Rights Movement — Tuesday’s result hurts but also serves as a reminder that social change movements take time and are marked by setbacks.
It was only a few years ago that marriage equality was a dream; George W. Bush was president and cynically used our rights as a wedge issue to win swing states; and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was the law of the land. Obama brought change to the bully pulpit, but one person alone can’t change the culture.
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