big?ot     (bgt) n. One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

As I drove to work today I listened to NPR. It was another story about how middle-America believes they are fighting the good fight to bring back traditional moral values to a country out of control. Mr and Mrs middle-America and their four brainwashed children expound wordfully on the virtues of their prayer group. The regard emphatically the shock that would undoubtedly overwhelm our founding fathers if they knew we needed amendments to define marriage. They continue on and on throughout the piece with the same slurry of religious sentiments you might expect to hear, right up to the activist judges.

This is of particular interest, not because it’s a new argument, but because of the actual crux of the news piece, which I’ve yet to mention: In Nebraska, the constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between ‘a man and a woman’ is being challenged in the state’s Supreme Court. Yes, the amendment which was just passed in November. One of 11 state amendments of it’s kind. This law is in danger of being found unconstitutional by the state’s highest court and the hateful right are up in arms.

As I write this, it occurs to me to make known a secret hope of mine: I hope one day my grandchildren will read this. I hope they will know that when 74% of the country believes gays are less than equal, that I was not among the majority. I liken it to finding a great-great-grandfather’s journal denouncing slavery before emancipation. Perhaps my stance is not quite so brazen, but it is no more popular. There is no question in my mind, in fact I take it as a given, that the coming generations will see this brand of bigotry fall away from the mainstream. That children will be taught about the time in American history when two men or two women would be granted a ‘civil union’ at best, and have their rights stripped at worst. I imagine these children having as difficult a time understanding this as I did as a grade-schooler learning about slavery, or perhaps more accurately: women’s sufferage; an idea so recently realized that our parents remember the struggle.

So love your freedom, grandchildren, and remember the words of Lewis Black:

“America is the land where people are free to dream whatever they want… So long as that dream doesn’t make midwesterners feel icky.”