The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.
— Galadriel
President Obama is not alone. Many people do not seem to understand that oppression of an entire people is not chronic. It is systemic. The infection grows.
When I was 12 or so, as boys that age do, I had somehow gotten ahold of a very old gay porn magazine that was almost as old as I was. It must have been from the very early 70’s.
Anyway, I liked it because this magazine featured guys just a little older than me — 18 and 19 year olds.
This was not like any porn magazine, gay or otherwise, from the present day. On one page it had two fully clothed young guys lying on a bed listening to music together, and there was a verbal spread around this picture, talking, in wistful terms, about how one day, in a future we possibly could not imagine, men could get married with other men.
This is the battle now, and as I think back on this magazine, I can imagine being ferocious, of roaring, rather than wistfully wondering if ever, and when. We’ve come a long way, but part of that way is in not being wistful anymore, and not asking, but demanding.
Of, finally, roaring.
I am past my marrying days. My lover died, I have no wish for the pain of another. I had a husband, I wasn’t allowed to call him that name, and it doesn’t matter now. I have been made a relic by time. But a lion roars inside. No, not a lion. A mouse. But a mouse that can change the world.
That there should be no wistful boys, wondering about that which might never be, thinking something is wrong inside.
A fatal miscalculation has been made. A nuclear bomb has been left sitting on the table.
And what our political leaders don’t understand is, it’s ticking.