Via SLOG…  The saving grace of loosing in California last Tuesday, is seeing how many of our heterosexual neighbors get it.

When I finished my remarks, it was question time, and the first question was: “But you’re not gay!?” I must radiate a kind of straight guy dumpiness that no self-respecting gay man would be caught dead displaying in public.

Anyway, I took it to mean, “So why do you care about this?” and gave an answer I’ve always been proud of.

“I see it through a Jewish perspective,” I said. “I see you guys as another loathed minority trying to get through the day.”

Which they are. Readers complain to me that homosexuality isn’t a God-given condition, but a sinful choice, and I always respond, “It is? A choice? Really? I couldn’t choose it. Could you?” They never have a good answer to that.

The look-how-far-we’ve-come aspect of Obama’s triumph was mitigated by citizens in California, Florida and Arizona voting to bar gay marriage. An awful intrusion of government into the private sphere, one we would never tolerate if it didn’t touch upon the American obsession with sex. I mean, we’d never ban gays from holding fishing licenses, arguing that they somehow spoil the fishing experience for the rest of us.

But religious conservatives have cooked up this palpable lie about gays and marriage, based on nothing at all, and the public has accepted it because it tickles the unexamined biases they already have.

Just like civil rights, this is a generational war that will be won, I have absolutely no doubt, in the fullness of time. But not yet.

Emphasis mine.  And actually…time was a homosexual might not be allowed even a fishing license.  Time was you could be denied all kinds of professional licenses if you were known to be homosexual.  You could have your plumber’s license taken away.  Your license to practice medicine.  You could be fired, evicted, rounded up by the cops in your local bar, or just walking down the street in some places, and tossed into jail.

The marriage barrier is a bitter, lingering part of all that.  It isn’t marriage they want to protect.  It’s the right to persecute homosexuals.  They can’t just round us up and toss us in jail anymore.  But they can still torment loving couples…still remind us that a whole human life is not ours to have…still drive the knife into our hearts every now and then, so they can feel good about themselves.