mean median mode

Jason Kuznicki has penned another insightful post, this time addressing a pivotal moment in gay politics. Highlights:

It's well documented that when a straight person actually knows a gay person, the prejudices vanish on both sides. The water cooler chats, the backyard barbecues, even the family reunions very often go our way so long as we just show up and affirm who we are....

...Things are pretty good at the top, too. Yes, the Republicans still dominate the federal government, and the religious right still dominates the Republican Party. But right now there are few serious anti-gay initiatives underway at the federal level. The FMA is unlikely ever to pass, and most people now see the ban on gays in the military for what it really was all along: a national embarrassment...

...America's political midsection is stuck in a time warp on gay rights. Local politics is a flashback to a time when "no special rights" was still an incisive slogan, when AIDS was purely the fault of gay people, and when the governor of Maryland, for one, could assert that same-sex marriage was "an oxymoron." This he did just last year. Also last year, my husband Scott called another one of our state legislators--and had to explain to him what a civil union was.

Go read the whole thing.