Timely as Today's Headlines

I could hardly look on the internets today without seeing something that reminded me of Meet Adam and Steve. First came The Onion, with its beautiful way of sparing no egos: New Hampshire Passes Law Forcing Old People To Watch Gays Marry. I love the punchline:

Gay marriage advocates are already protesting the new statute, which they say unlawfully forces homosexuals to have gross old people at their weddings.

Then along comes Dan Savage with a column very near and dear to this blog. Dan's last reader submission was from a straight couple who plan to ask guests at their wedding to make charitable donations in lieu of gifts. They asked Dan to suggest nonprofit groups that advocate for marriage equality, and Dan responded thus.

Thanks for thinking of us, STBM, which is more than President Obama is willing to do: I would recommend that you put Lambda Legal (they’re lawyers, they sue) and Freedom To Marry (they’re advocates, they woo) on your list. Unlike most national gay organizations, Lambda Legal and Freedom to Marry do good work and get results. Thanks and congratulations!

I immediately added these to my list of churches and organizations to contact in order to get input on, and faces for, my blog. Then I reminded myself that it's early days yet, and I need to consider carefully before throwing myself behind organizations that look good. I'm not a political animal, and I don't like lobbyists or litigiousness. Hmmm... how could I make that last sentence more alliterative? Bah. Too late to think about it now. Where was I? Oh, litigiousness and thinking.

See, the thing is, I don't want to preach to the choir. It's all well and good to get a bunch of GLBT and liberal folks following this blog, but if that's all I get then I'll consider it a big, popular failure. I want to reach people who are like I would have been if I hadn't gone to Cornell: those who are living in small towns across the country and who've never knowingly met a homosexual. And I think I can say with authority that most of those folks not only dislike big government and political power brokerage, but they feel like their voices are never heard beneath the roaring of slick-talking politicians who listen only to the other slick voices coming out of places like New York City and Albany. Right or wrong, associating myself with groups like Lambda Legal and Freedom to Marry will ensure that I lose lots of the very people I'm trying to reach with the first page load.

What do you think? I'd appreciate the advice of anyone who has worked with these groups.

Now, on to an article that I found while googling "gay [something or other] in millburn nj". I'm not sure what the something or other was, because I've been doing a lot of googling like this lately. Anyway, I found an article in maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com that was published just hours earlier. It seems that...

the Maplewood Township Committee meeting last night ... voted unanimously to pass a resolution calling on state legislators to sanction same-sex marriage. It is believed to be the first of its kind in New Jersey.

Maplewood is a town within walking distance of where I live in Millburn, and is known for being gay-friendly.

I'm psyched about the Maplewood Township Committee resolution. I'm psyched to have found out from this article about Garden State Equality, "a New Jersey advocacy organization for marriage equality based in Montclair". I'm much more psyched, though, that the article also led me to tonight's daily face. See above.