Tiny worlds, worlds apart

The world is tiny.

At a party last night, I met a guy who, after about an hour, I realized was a blogger I used to link to back in the day (velcro.prosaic.nu), back before either of us had retired our blogs and moved out here to the tundra. You see, it's not just Madison that's small, it's the whole world.

At the same party last night, I had a conversation with a friend who is working to fight our state's amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions, who said that he and his partner plan to move out of the state if the amendment passes. It reminded me of something I wrote to Aaron a while ago, when Congress was considering a federal gay marriage amendment:

There's a part of me that looks forward to the day such an amendment passes, when we all will flee across the border in little homo caravans, covered wagons tarped with 800 thread count Egyptian cotton and piled high with all the Diesel jeans and Clinique For Men skin care products we can carry. It will be a spectacle that will make San Francisco Pride look like the pony ride line at the state fair. We will leave George Bush's America under a rainbow banner and take all the color with us when we go.

That was just over a year ago, right before I had moved to the tundra.

But this place -- this flat, corn-fed, permafrosted wasteland; this cheese-head Eden; this scepter'd isle -- god damn if it hasn't changed me already.

A year later, I don't really want to leave this place. For one thing, my job here is sort of a dream, and I can't just pick up and move without a significant blow to my career.

For another, where would I go? There are amendments like this in the constitutions of a growing number of states, and we haven't been able to turn one aside yet. How many times would I have to run away?

And finally, I'm not leaving, because this is just noise. History is marching this nation inexorably towards justice and equal recognition for us. We are at the cusp of the greatest new civil rights breakthrough since the end of segregation, and I want to be here at the start of things.

And then, in thirty years time, I want to tell my nephews long stories about the culture wars, and the time before his uncles could marry, and how sweet those first days of equality were.