It seems to me that the thrust of many well meaning tactical arguments in light of the passage of Prop 8 is that gay and lesbian people asked for too much, too soon. That the next practical step is to wait until acceptance of gay marriage reaches some hypothetical tipping point, that we will make incremental progress toward that tipping point by having more "out" sports stars, military personnel, etc.  

And when that tipping point is reached, then we can ask for, and receive, the right to marry.  

When I stated, in Dave Cullen's thread, that I didn't think it was necessary to slowly win people over to our side, that I believed this was a right right now, that the courts would overrule the homophobic, bigoted majority, as was proper, I was likened to Malcolm X. (Which would cast those doing the likening in the role of the Blue-Eyed Devil, I suppose.)  I think they are more, and less, correct about that than they may imagine.  

But first, a little history: Dr. King didn't wait for Sidney Poitier to make enough movies about desegregated lunch counters. He sat at the segregated counter and desegregated it himself. And he enraged people in the process.  

He didn't say to black Americans, wait, wait. Eventually they will see that we are equal human beings and THEN we can petition for equal rights! He took to the streets of Selma, and he brought tens of thousands with him. He spoke back to power in Washington, and he brought hundreds of thousands with him.  

He was arrested, threatened, harassed, bugged, beaten and eventually assassinated. It was King's assassination that became that "tipping point" in the American consciousness.  

For a lot of LGBT people, the brutal murder of Matthew Shephard was our "tipping point." The gay rights movement changed fundamentally in the wake of his death. There would be no magical moment in the future in which people like Matthew Shephard's murderers would come to "accept" and "tolerate" homosexuals. And in that realization, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and the people who love us instead started pressing for hate crime legislation. (That's another battle we haven't won yet either.)  

Because here’s the unvarnished truth: There will always be people who are extremely uncomfortable with gay people. Uncomfortable enough to kill them, beat them in the streets, disown them.  And people who will beat you in the streets, tie you to a fence and leave you to die, who can turn on their sons and daughters for loving someone are never going to be moved by actors, athletes and soldiers.  

As a result, we shouldn't have to, and aren't going to, wait until the majority discomfort subsides. Because there's a very real possibility that it never will.  

Some--many--believe that in light of that fact, gay people should ratchet down demands and accept a modified version of marriage called "civil unions," the idea being that if it confers the same legal rights on a couple, why press to co-opt the word, and the concept of "marriage."   In the same conversation, Dave Cullen made the excellent point that eliminating "marriage" from the law and replacing it with "civil union" is the metaphoric equivalent of burning down the house so gay people can't come in. He's right.  

I tried to make the point that traditional marriage will exist, and be utterly and completely unaltered when gay people are allowed to marry and that the only people whose lives will change when marriage becomes an inclusive institution are gay people's.  

But the truth is, this is an emotional issue—not a religious issue—for many, many people. And you can’t argue with emotion.  

For straight people to counsel "patience," to tell LGBT people that we want too much, too soon, is as maddening as it is disheartening. It suggests that there's something understandable, if not acceptable, about the profound resistance to granting us equal rights.  

Malcolm X was suspect of white's commitment to civil rights, in part because he'd heard--too many times--that same counsel. Be patient. Be quiet. Be polite. Don't make people angry.  

Gay marriage will make some people angry. That’s not going to change. It’s time to accept that a portion of the national community will be enraged by the very idea that gays and lesbians must not be excluded from marriage.  

But this is a country of laws, not men. And no matter how some men and women may feel, the law will prevail.  

During the civil rights movement, the laws came first and then and only then did hearts and minds follow. Sometimes, they follow slowly. Sometimes, they don't follow at all. I am old enough to remember the violence and hatred on display during the desegregation of the Boston public school systems.  

But just as granting equal civil rights to black Americans did not result in the total collapse of the American way of life as those who opposed it feared and believed it would, allowing gay people to marry will not destroy the institution of marriage.  

The right will come first and the realization will follow.