Equality

     Try to imagine anyone speaking these words- all of them- last week in Tampa:

And he reminds me that we are playing a long game here…and that change is hard, and change is slow, and it never happens all at once. 

But eventually we get there, we always do.

We get there because of folks like my Dad…folks like Barack's grandmother…men and women who said to themselves, "I may not have a chance to fulfill my dreams, but maybe my children will…maybe my grandchildren will."

So many of us stand here tonight because of their sacrifice, and longing, and steadfast love…because time and again, they swallowed their fears and doubts and did what was hard.

So today, when the challenges we face start to seem overwhelming – or even impossible – let us never forget that doing the impossible is the history of this nation…it's who we are as Americans…it's how this country was built.

And if our parents and grandparents could toil and struggle for us…if they could raise beams of steel to the sky, send a man to the moon, and connect the world with the touch of a button…then surely we can keep on sacrificing and building for our own kids and grandkids.

And if so many brave men and women could wear our country's uniform and sacrifice their lives for our most fundamental rights…then surely we can do our part as citizens of this great democracy to exercise those rights…surely, we can get to the polls and make our voices heard on Election Day.

If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire…if immigrants could leave behind everything they knew for a better life on our shores…if women could be dragged to jail for seeking the vote…if a generation could defeat a depression, and define greatness for all time…if a young preacher could lift us to the mountaintop with his righteous dream…and if proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love…then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

Because in the end, more than anything else, that is the story of this country – the story of unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle. 

     Frank Bruni puts it more bluntly:

WHAT the Republicans painstakingly constructed here was meant to look like the biggest of tents. And still they couldn’t spare so much as a sleeping bag’s worth of space for the likes of me. 

Women were welcomed. During the prime evening television hours, the convention stage was festooned with them, and when they weren’t at the microphone, they were front and center in men’s remarks. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney both gushed about their moms in tributes as tactical as they were teary. 

Latinos were plentiful and flexed their Spanish — “En América, todo es posible,” said Susana Martinez, the New Mexico governor — despite an “English First” plank in the party’s regressive platform. 

And while one preconvention poll suggested that roughly zero percent of African-Americans support Romney, Republicans found several prominent black leaders to testify for him. Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, delivered what will surely be remembered as the convention’s most stirring and substantive remarks, purged of catcalls and devoid of slickly rendered fibs. 

But you certainly didn’t see anyone openly gay on the stage in Tampa. More to the point, you didn’t hear mention of gays and lesbians. Scratch that: Mike Huckabee, who has completed a ratings-minded transformation from genial pol to dyspeptic pundit, made a derisive reference to President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage. We were thus allowed a fleeting moment inside the tent, only to be flogged and sent back out into the cold. 

It was striking not because a convention or political party should make a list of minority groups and dutifully put a check mark beside each. That’s an often hollow bow to political correctness. 

It was striking because the Republicans went so emphatically far, in terms of stagecraft and storytelling, to profess inclusiveness, and because we gays have been in the news rather a lot over the last year or so, as the march toward marriage equality picked up considerable velocity. We’re a part of the conversation. And our exile from it in Tampa contradicted the high-minded “we’re one America” sentiments that pretty much every speaker spouted. 

It also denied where the country is so obviously headed and where so many Republicans have quietly arrived. To wit: David Koch, the billionaire industrialist who has funneled millions into efforts to elect Romney and other Republicans, told a Politico reporter who caught up with him in Tampa and asked him about gay rights, “I believe in gay marriage.” Reminded that Romney didn’t, Koch said, “Well, I disagree with that.” 

..... On the convention stage in Tampa, where estrogen was platinum and melanin was gold, Republicans spoke eloquently about a country that valued every person’s worth and was poised to reward each person’s dreams. Those words would have carried much more weight if coupled with even a glancing recognition of gay and lesbian Americans. Instead speakers tacitly let the party’s platform do the talking. It calls for the kind of constitutional amendment that Romney now supports. 

Sorry, Governor Martinez, you’re wrong. Todo no es posible. Not if you’re gay and live in Wisconsin (Ryan’s home state), Michigan (Romney’s) or 42 others and want to get married. Not if you’re gay and listened to all the soaring oratory in Tampa with the wish for one sentence or syllable of reassurance that the tent stretched all the way to you.