Equal and Opposite

AS ACCEPTANCE OF GAY MARRIAGE sweeps inexorably across the nation, state by state - minnesota recently became the twelfth state to legalize it - one can almsot sense a building conservative exodus from mainstream america.

Soon there will be an alternative, conservative, heterosexual version of the boy scouts of america. Indeed there already is, something called the "pathfinders", or some such. The regular boy scouts, in the midst of a great conscience clearing, is struggling with itself mightily to pull itself forward into the modern era of encroaching tolerance for people - just because they are people.

If the american military can do it, by golly, anybody can do it. Not only do we now allow gay folks to serve in the military, we allow it openly. Really, "don't ask don't tell seemed harmless enough, and practical to boot; just do your job, and no need to proclaim your sexual orientation, straight or gay. But we live in an era of strident proclamation of one's true identity. It is not enough to simply be; one must be heard.

So the homosexuals are entering the mainstream, and the right wingers are leaving it, in a huff. Are we anticipating the formation of an all heterosexual military to  offer an alternative to our sexually tolerant regular one?

But wait; we already tried that. Recall the militia movement of the early nineteen nineties, when the election of bill clinton so agitated our straight laced defenders of freedom, tradition-changelessness   and heterosexual christian capitalist vitue, that a gun slinging militia, begotten of the jesus, guns and money crowd, sprang up across freedom's land...and then vanished in the woods, campfires smoldering for a time, only to be quenched with the cool water of common sense and Tim McVeigh.

And so it may come to pass that for every sexually tolerant entity, there is an equal and opposite intolerant heterosexual only entity, from the boy scouts, to the girl scouts, to bowling leagues across the fruited plain, and even to the military. Don't write the militia folks off quite yet; they are most resilient, and probably due for a comeback.