Heartache With Hard Work

Living In Colour – Frightened Rabbit
Foot Shooter – Frightened Rabbit

The project for the next month is catching up on album reviews I never got around to writing. Today it’s The Winter Of Mixed Drinks from Frightened Rabbit. Their last record was my #2 record of the past decade, so my hopes really couldn’t have been higher. As is usually in the case, the result can only be mixed.

Basically, this is a very nice record, but it just can’t escape from the shadow of something greater. And I mean that in more than the obvious way that it’s the follow-up to a masterpiece. As is often the case for bands not called The Beatles, one brilliant record generates echoes that are keenly felt, as much as they might want to escape them.  The dilemma is thatyYou can’t simply remake the previous record; that would be uninteresting and self-derivative, and the muse never strikes the same way twice. But change is tough, too. So you end up in a twilight space. Occasionally this tension creates something truly amazing (Electro-Shock Blues from Eels strikes me as a great example of this phenomenon), but usually you get something that can’t quite find the right place to settle.

This is compounded by the specificity of the past record.  The Midnight Organ Fight was fundamentally about heartbreak and pain.  It was evocative because of how bitter and caustic and real the sentiment underneath it felt.  And that made the payoffs, the moments of sunshine and warmth feel all the more genuine.  That rock-solid emotional core is absent this time around.  It’s not a happy record, precisely, but it comes from a place of emotional stability and strength.  And that leaves it just a little bit aimless.

The past record hit with so much more force because you always got the sense that the style of each song was driven by some internal necessity.  The songs sounded like they did because they simply couldn’t take any other form.  This time, the album feels more coherent in sonic-sense, but only because some of the particularities that each song ought to evoke are wiped away.  To put it simply: it sometimes sounds like they’re trying to force discontinuous-edged pegs into square holes.  Or, to get even more geeky: these songs ought to sound like irrational numbers, but we’re only hearing them rounded out to integers.

To me that is made most clear on “Living in Colour.”  Not because the song is bad.  In fact, it is without a doubt the best song on the record.  The thing is that it’s almost too good.  By which I mean: it’s stadium rock done by a band that really needs to not let themselves waste their talents being just another stadium rock band.  It’s ridiculously good, no doubt, but you just can’t see how they could possibly improve on this song within the genre.

Of course, all of this is just the necessary preamble to pointing out that, all this notwithstanding, this is a very fine record.  The guitar work is as good as ever–they can do the big jangly parade of fireworks and magic (“Living in Colour”), the bass-driven drunkard’s walk home, full of introspection and false certainty (“The Wrestle”), the gentle edge of dissonance that bookends the slightly bedraggled but resilient core of a song (“Skip the Youth”).  And then there’s “Nothing Like You” which is surely they’re most straightforward rock song, with a wonderfully insistent bass line keeping the whole thing interesting.  The percussion is stellar as well.  Grant Hutchinson’s drum beats always give me a sense that he remains perfectly stationary while the entire rest of the universe is knocked around – it’s one of the defining characteristics of the band, and something that’s on fine display in this go around.

There’s plenty of other good tracks, too.  “Foot Shooter” takes a while to grow on you, but has a deep empathy locked inside.  “Things” doesn’t quite manage to properly establish the calm/stormy balance it’s looking for, but is still quite good.  And “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” provides the counterpoint to “Floating in the Forth” from the previous record.  This time, swimming out is a luxurious possibility, rather than an emotional necessity.  As an independent song, it doesn’t quite carry the risk of loss that is needed to make it work.  But read as an internal dialogue of the band it all fits together well enough.

All of which is to say: even when things don’t work perfectly, this is still a great record.  For all the minor complaints, there’s only one genuine WTF moment, in the form of “Man/Bag Of Sand” which is, as far as I can tell, a re-make of “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” by their untalented nephews or something.  Apart from that, you’ve got a bunch of good songs that lie just on the wrong side of greatness.  Which is still very much worth your time.

Skid Marks – Possum Dixon (from the lovely and unfortunately forgotten Star Maps)

So it looks like the Republicans have got the votes together to ensure a bipartisan-ish restriction on earmarks.  What ought we think about this?

Well, earmarks are just so insignificant (and do not themselves appropriate ANY money, remember) that treating this as a budgetary matter is pretty silly.  That said, Matt Yglesias argues that we should still be happy they’re getting restricted:

But all that said, any kind of sensibly operationalized ban on earmarks really will, in a small way, be a good thing. Since members of congress are elected to represent specific geographical constituencies, it’s inevitable that parochial interests will be overrepresented in the legislative process relative to national interests. Any procedural rule that leans against that tendency is, in my view, a good thing. It’s good not because representation of local interests is a bad thing per se, but simply because our political system is very heavily weighted in that direction anyway.

There’s some truth to that, but I also worry that it puts us on the wrong track for actually thinking about the nature of this problem.   The question is not whether we can moderately restrict the parochialization of politics, it’s whether this particular means of restricting it is that useful.  There’s two reasons to think it’s not.

First, the struggle over earmarks is as much a separation of powers battle as anything else.  The budget is a strange enterprise, balanced in many ways between executive and legislative power.  While Congress has the power of the purse and must ultimately authorize and appropriate the funds, the executive is charged with setting out the budget AND with implementing it.  Which means in practical terms Congress often can only set general policy but not ensure the actual implementation matches their idea.  Earmarks are one tool Congress has to restrain executive prerogative about this part of the budgeting.  And all things equal, I’m in favor of the legislative side retaining power vis a vis the executive.

Second, the even more significant role that earmarks is to facilitate log-rolling.  The wheels of Congress turn extremely slowly, and it’s incredibly hard to generate coalitions to get things done.  Earmarks are a modestly powerful tool for facilitating that.  You want Congresswoman X on your side on a vote?  Well, she’s concerned that she’ll take a small hit with the voters back home if she sticks her head out on this.  Solution: give her an earmark so that the small hit that she takes for the vote is overwhelmed by the very specific benefit she can point to.

This thesis, compelling argued by Douglas Arnold in The Logic of Congressional Action, is grounded in the sense that small but mobilized publics may exert a lot more influence on Congress than inchoate majorities.  Which means that lawmakers may be compelled to work together for the general interest as long as they can deliver perceptible, traceable benefits to their constituents. Earmarks are a great example of this.  They permit 218 people who agree in vague terms to actually all vote for a specific bill containing stuff they wouldn’t personally support otherwise.  It’s a positive-sum trade because each side gets more out of the deal than they put in.  Public policy in general sacrifices a vanishingly small percentage of the budget in order to get broad compromise on important issues.  And individual congresspeople sacrifice a sliver of general credibility for the benefit of a very specific gain that will be more significant to their personal re-election chances.

The other factor going on here, from a liberal’s perspective, is the pure politics of the matter.  If the Republican Congressional strategy is basically to vote as a bloc against anything Obama supports in the hopes of denying him ‘bipartisan’ credibility, then this cuts against that goal.  So maybe the optics of Obama being able to stand together with DeMint, et al. in the interests of good governance will be good for him–and thus the Democrats.  It’s hard to quantify that value, but maybe it’s important enough to care about.

Nothing Can Kill The Grimace – Mixtapes

Music!  I am here to write about music!  After a long day grading (mostly terrible) papers I really feel the need to let my hair down and focus on something completely different.  And thus: I return to the blog to talk about Mixtapes.

Their new album is called Maps (free download!) and at 18 minutes (spread over 10 songs) it may be the purest and most delightfully simple record of the year.  This is pop-punk as it was meant to be played: with enthusiasm, dueling boy-girl vocals that ricochet around like a kid on a sugar high, bass that stands right up at the front of the mix and isn’t afraid to push you around a little bit, and some kick-ass choruses.  It sounds so simple, but so few bands can do it well.  Out of nowhere this has turned into one of my favorite records of the year.

They remind me a lot of Defiance, Ohio – the record’s got that DIY, Plan-It-X sort of feel. Or, to go a little more old-school, how about The Promise Ring?

And did I mention that it’s only 18 minutes long?  They certainly don’t mess around.  These songs come in quick, give you everything you want, and don’t stick around to wear out their welcome. The one track that lasts more than 3 minutes (“Sunsets”) is also a welcome change of pace to close out the record: in classic punk tradition, you have to close things out with a quiet and beautiful slice of piano and acoustic guitar to cool you down.

The standout track is “Nothing Can Kill The Grimace,” which is probably the most energetic and fun song I’ve heard all year.

I also discovered in writing this post that they’ve already released a new EP, to go along with the record – also available for free download from their website.  That makes 14 tracks and 25 minutes of music, all free, and all wonderful.

I’ve gone back and forth a lot on my feeling about the repeal (or lack thereof) of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  I’ve been very sympathetic to the arguments that it makes some sense to go slow if it comes with the reward of reducing the salience of the issue when repeal actually happens.  However, that case rather depended on this actually getting done by the end of 2010.  Sadly, that appears to be pretty much off the table at this point.

Elsewhere, I’m also sympathetic to the argument that the Administration had good reason to appeal the District Court ruling that said DADT was unconstitutional.  I’m not tremendously sympathetic to efforts to defer all constitutional interpretation to the judicial branch (on the whole I think our political branches ought to take a substantially larger role for themselves in the interpretation and defense of the constitution.  c.f. – Robin West, Mark Tushnet, etc.), and letting the Circuit Court decision is kind of a world case version of that.  I really don’t like the idea that future executives should feel free to cherry pick individual Circuit Court decisions that they happen to politically support and allowing them to stand.

Somewhat related: I think there is a plausible case that there is important precedent at stake here on the matter of judicial deference re: military matters.  I don’t actually AGREE with that case (this is the flip side of my point above.  I don’t like the attempts by political actors to pretend that they have no role in constitutional interpretation – and I don’t like the attempts by the judicial branch to mark off major sections of law as beyond their purvey simply because they happen to involve the military), but I understand why it might matter a lot to the administration.  And I’d forgive them  this if I thought there was a strong case that legislative rollback was coming soon.

But…that doesn’t really seem to be the case.

I’ve said a lot in the past couple years defending Obama and his administration against attacks from the left.  I will continue to do that.  I think they’ve, on the whole, done a pretty good job.  But this is one place I’m feeling increasingly willing to call this out as a massive blunder.

Basically, I agree with Scott Lemieux (in his agreement with Yglesias and Drum) that while the Republicans should hold the lion’s share of the blame for their efforts to preserve bigotry and retrograde cultural attitudes, there’s plenty of anger worth directing at the Democrats here:

This puts all of the direct blame on Republicans, who deserve at least 90% of the blame in any case.  But this still doesn’t explain why the Democrats are pre-emptively capitulating on an issue on which they hold the political leverage. As Matt says, filibustering defense appropriations bills is unpopular, and DADT is unpopular. Certainly, if the shoe was on the other foot McConnell would force the Dems to filibuster multiple times and put intense pressure on the moderates. It’s entirely possible that there’s nothing Reid can do to get “moderate” Republican frauds to do the right thing, but at least Dems  could get a political victory out of it.   By just surrendering when they hold the political cards, the Democratic leadership must bear some responsibility for the circular firing squad.

I was having lunch today and the following took place:

– Mother and child (roughly 4 years old) begin eating. They are enjoying the food, the nice day, etc.  All is well with the world.
– The child gets bored with eating and begins fidgeting like crazy.
– The child walks over to the front door and starts ‘playing’ there. This ‘play’ clearly signifies even to relatively thick people like me: “I AM SICK OF BEING HERE AND WANT TO LEAVE”
– The play devolves into pushing at the door, but not being strong enough to actually open it.
– The mother comes and collects the child, saying “I know you want to leave, and we will leave in just five more minutes. Mommy isn’t done eating yet, though.”
– The child returns to the door and pushes at it, succeeding just enough to get it an inch open thus enabling her finger to get jammed by it when it closes. She does the little kid thing where they look around, start to well up, and you know that in just about 4 seconds they are going to be BAWLING.
– She starts crying and screaming.
– The mother comes over to comfort her. “Oh, you poor thing” etc.
– 45 seconds later, they have left, with the mother leaving a healthy amount of food on the plate, and the kid is now smiling.

In other news, it’s election day tomorrow.

“This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you.”
–C. Montgomery Burns

For those who hadn’t noticed, it’s election time in America.  I’m filling out my ballot and it reminds me once again of just how MUCH people in this country are expected to vote on.

President, Senators and Representatives at the national and state level, Governor…sure.  Maybe even an initiative or two – though my distaste for the direct ballot measure grows the more I experience it in action.

But on my ballot, in addition to those races I’m also being asked to vote for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Controller, Treasurer, Attorney General, Insurance Commissioner, and Member for the State Board of Equalization.  And those are the easy ones because they’re all partisan.  I don’t have to know a thing about Betty T. Yee to vote for her for the Equalization Board because it says “Democratic” next to her name.

But then there is the judicial races.  It takes some digging to find out who these people are. You certainly can’t read the official statements because they’re blander than bland.  “I will uphold the law, etc.”  Which is nice to know I guess, but has nothing to do with what actual decisions they would make.  Fortunately, there are conservative blogs who care about this stuff a lot.  All you have to do is flip their recommendations and you’re golden.  It turns out the LOVE Ming Chin.  So he’s a ‘no.’  And they think Carlos Moreno is the devil incarnate.  So he’s a ‘yes.’  But then you get down to the race for Court of Appeal, Presiding Justice, 6th Appellate District.  And I have zero useful information about Conrad Rushing.

And then there’s the race for Superintendent.  Which is one of the few places where I can’t even just look to the unions for support.  Because I kind of distrust teacher unions.  So the fact that they support Torlakson doesn’t really help me.

And then you get to the city level, where the only truly relevant information I’ve been able to suss out is that one of the 8 candidates is a Republican.  It doesn’t say that on the ballot or anything.  I had to go read some articles in the local newspaper for that.  So I’ve narrowed the field down to seven.  All of them want to help local business, maintain public safety, and preserve the local environment.  Because who wouldn’t want to do those things?

And THEN, there are all the propositions.  Nine of them statewide this year.  I know for sure how I’m voting on most, but still am not sure about a couple.

Ones I’m certain about:
19 (marijuana legalization) – YES
23 (kill AB 32 law on emissions reduction) – NO
24 (repeal the corporate tax loophole) – YES
25 (can pass a budget with a simple majority) – YES
26 (make it even MORE impossible to collect the money necessary to run a government) – NO

Ones that still puzzle me a bit:
20 and 27 (redistricting) – my union tells me to support 27 (which would kill the redistricting commission), and I see the argument.  The commission is equally weighted in partisan terms which doesn’t match up to the actual makeup of the state.  But I remain a bit troubled by the general sense of entitlement: that parties ought to have ownership over redistricting and that this ought to be part of the spoils of electoral war.  I don’t know that the commission is a particularly good way of dealing with that, but surely there have to be more procedurally fair ways of thinking about this matter.

21 (increase licensing fees to pay for state parks) – Obviously I’m sympathetic to the cause.  But this seems like a very strange use of the initiative process.  And I really don’t like the attitude that the appropriate response to our budgeting breakdowns is to pick and choose a few specific things and create specific revenue streams for them.  I’ll probably vote yes, but the whole process feels a bit icky.

22 (prevent raiding of local governments) – Honestly, this one has me a bit baffled. I’ll probably vote no on the general principle that the budgeting process does not need to be made any more complicated.

So what can we make of all this?  Well, my general feeling is that I’m a big political nerd.  And even I felt a bit overwhelmed.  If we want people to make informed judgments, our system is not very well designed to produce that result.

We love to valorize democracy in this country.  But if this is what is meant by ‘democracy’ then something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The Mission – Unexplainable Stories

There’s a long-running debate about what is causing the coming Republican wave.  The right wants to sell it as a judgment on the Obama agenda, as a re-assertion of the fundamental center-right nature of the American electorate freaking out about the policies the Democrats have pushed.  The left tends to say that it’s simply the economy.  You can guess based on this which side I come down on, but I want to explore the matter in a bit more detail because I think it’s important to see WHY the poles tend to see the arguments this way.

At stake is the question of whether all the seats Republicans pick up can be thought of as ‘rightly’ belonging to them, or whether the victory should be read as an accident of the historical moment—and the true sense of the electorate remains in the progressive camp.

The risk for the left in this argument is that it very easily spills over into accusations of false consciousness.  In effect, if people claim that they prefer Republicans to Democrats, who are we to argue about what they REALLY mean?

I am sensitive to this, and I do think that sometimes the “it’s the economy, stupid” brigade tends to minimize the capacity for voters to actually make up their mind.  There certainly is a lot to the macro-level political science argument that structural factors massively outweigh particular explanations.  But it’s always important to remember that this is a large-scale explanation that does not work at a granular level.  Structure doesn’t erase agency—although it absolutely does constrain it in less visible ways.

That said, it doesn’t take much digging into the polls to find evidence that the “it’s the economy, stupid” theory is pretty apt.  Because on the whole voters still prefer the policies of Democrats to the Republicans and even think that Democrats are better on the economy.  They just aren’t willing to use that preference as a guide for their voting behavior in this election.

Now, I personally think that’s an obnoxious and somewhat petulant way of approaching your vote—using it to send a signal of general dissatisfaction—but it’s a pretty easy one to grasp.  And it doesn’t mean that people have suddenly seen the light on social conservatism or tax cuts for the wealthy.  It doesn’t NOT mean that, perhaps.  It might just be a null test of the whole hypothesis.  We won’t really be able to judge it except in retrospect.

The other thing to remember here is that the overwhelming amount of evidence we get is NOT actually granulated.  We “know” that there is a Republican wave building because of polling data – which is macro-level.  We think we know about the wave because of all the stories about angry Tea Partiers and people at town halls and the like.  But those are, in the grand scheme of things, very anecdotal.  Reporters are stuck in a difficult space where they want to find a story, but they really don’t have any more access to the real macro-level information than any of the rest of us.  So they tell very specific stories informed by specific motivations.  And that means searching out for people telling stories about their votes that seem to validate particular narratives.  But you’re really going to have trouble finding meaningful evidence for ANY narrative at this point in time.

I’m not saying there’s no value to highly specific, thick description of perspectives.  I just think that when you try to employ anthropological tools to tell stories about broad social change and economic motivations you tend to run yourself into trouble.  If we can let the two sit side by side in our minds, and not try to imagine that they are capable of speaking to precisely the same story, then we’ll do just fine.

The Winner Takes It All – Abba

Today the subject is a couple memes that are running around which irritate me.  Not because there’s NO truth in them, but because they serve as overly simplistic ways of approaching situations that deserve a bit more attention.

First, that this is going to be a landslide election, a massive indication of the breakdown in public faith for the Democratic Party, a total public repudiation of Obama and company, etc.  I’ve complained about this before, but it deserves saying again.  In the most extreme of the blowout scenarios, the GOP gets 80-90 seats, and thus obtains…a majority of roughly the same size as the one the Democrats currently have.  The much more likely scenario is a Republican majority of a modest size.  As in: voters will vote roughly equally for the two parties.

That’s not nothing.  It’s certainly a steep drop from 2008.  And it does a lot of damage to the idea that 2006/2008 was the beginning of a strong and sustainable Democratic wave.  But it is simply false to assert that there is no viable argument for Democrats to make, that the narrative is so doomed that all they can do is hang on for dear life.

It’s a tough time to be a Democrat absolutely.  But a big chunk of it is simply the fact that there was a Blue wave in 2008 thanks to the economy.  And since things don’t seem to have improved much since then, that support has dried up.

Second, deficits didn’t cause this economic crisis, but they certainly have been PRODUCED by it.  What generates revenue for the government? Taxes.  And since those taxes come from income and the movement of money around the economy, if there’s a major recession then government revenue gets a lot smaller.

There absolutely are important questions to be asked about long term fiscal stability.  But the FIRST question you ought to be asking is how to facilitate a strong economy upon which all the rest of the fiscal accounting can be done.  And the SECOND question you should ask is how many billions we’re going to be cutting from military spending.  If you claim to care about deficits but take the military off the table before the conversation has even started, I have a hard time taking you seriously.

Third, how exactly did Ferguson ‘win big’ in this whole escapade?  He maintained the status quo, by paying Rooney WAY more money.  Sounds like Rooney is the winner to me.

No, I’m not dead.  And no, the blog isn’t dead either.  Just mostly dead.

Anyways, to tide you over while I do other things and fail to write about music, here’s a video of a polar bear cub seeing itself in the mirror:

Adorable!

I Feel Better (Live) – Frightened Rabbit (from the Liver! Lung! FR! album

I still think of Dan Savage as the guy who writes the sex advice column in the back of The Stranger, but in the 15 years since I first read him, he has somehow turned into one of the most important (and best) voices for queers, for sex and those who like it, and for a progressive sense of society (and politics) in general.

I can’t really say what the secret to his success is, apart from a strident honesty.  My best guess is that he is a great example of how to escape the HHGTTG problem of leadership.  To wit:

The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

The great thing about him, I think, is that he’s a standard-bearer for a movement that he himself feels conflicted about.  He cares about the issues, certainly, but seems to remain in some serious doubt that he ‘deserves’ to be in that role.  His primary gig, of course, is as an advice columnist.  A job whose sole qualification—as he often states—is simply that people ask you for your advice.

That’s a lot of background, but I think it’s important for the point I want to make about his current effort: the “it gets better” project.  After reading about a particularly troubling case of a young gay kid committing suicide, he wrote:

“My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”

I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

So that’s what he did, making a short film with his boyfriend to make this point, and dropping it on youtube.

I started out skeptical.  Not for any particular reason, but just out of a general sense of distrust for clever attempts to use new media, and for schlocky attempt to sugar-coat life.

But after watching the video–and watching some of the many, many videos made by people who aren’t famous or ‘important’–I think this is actually really important, and good.

They key reason is the way that the constant invocation of ‘it gets better’ does quite a bit more than it initially appears.  I see three main objections that people might make: 1) this kind of thing is faux-activism that doesn’t make a real difference 2) that it would be better to actually focus on improving things where kids ARE, not just telling them to wait until things improve 3) it creates false expectations.  Things might get better if you’re Dan Savage but most people won’t find perfect lives.  There’s some truth to all of these, but I think they each suffer from the problem of myopia.  By which I mean: they treat the literal message as if it’s the only message.

But that’s not at all the limit.  When you say ‘it gets better’ you’re actually doing a lot of things.  You’re expressing sympathy, by communicating to people in tough times that there are people out there who know what you’re going through.  You’re judging their tormentors–making clear that what may seem natural and acceptable to the people in their immediate environment is being criticized and called out by people elsewhere.  That can be a powerful thing.  One of the toughest things about being a kid is that you don’t have a very good outrage-meter.  And for people who suffer chronic bullying, it’s very easy to start doubting yourself.  But perhaps most importantly, you’re not just telling people that things get better, you’re making an accusation that the conditions many young gay kids are forced to endure are unacceptable.  To say ‘it gets better’ is to also state that the way things are right now is unacceptable.

And the message is not just for the victims.  It’s for the culture as a whole.  The fact that thousands of people are making their own videos takes this far beyond the vanity project of one guy.  It makes it a collective work–a cathartic process for people to mark the pain of their own lives and express the joys they’ve been able to find.  It doesn’t sugar coat.  You see that there is endless variety in what it means to grow up.  But that’s precisely the point.  Life is not the simple set of circumstances in which you grow up.  It can be almost anything.

And when we say ‘it gets better’ it’s also a call to action.  The reason it gets better is because people MAKE it better.  And the people who make it better are not just the individuals themselves.  It’s society in general that has to change.  This project is part of that process, to the extent that it draws a line in the sand.  It exposes the parochialism of small minds as the toxic social function that it is.  And, importantly, it does it in the form of making positive statements rather than simply listing out grievances.

It treats gay people as just…people. People who deserve the chance to live normal lives, to possibly do great things, and to possibly do small things.  Not as victims who must endlessly suffer and identify themselves against that suffering–except to the extent that EVERYONE must do that.

And that’s not nothing.  It matters.  I don’t know if it matters a lot.  Change is slow when it happens on a broad social level.  But it does happen.  And when you add up a lot of little things like this, it goes just a little bit faster.