...courtesy of last Friday's Rachel Maddow Show.

Short version: The quietly but pervasively anti-gay GOP will very soon face a reckoning with an increasingly equality-friendly nation, and it's going to be something to see.

On a related note, I'm finding myself increasingly obsessed with the need for some sort of safe space/learning zone for those folks still working their way toward gay acceptance. It's tough, because once the "gay are just people!" light goes off in your brain, it's hard to imagine how you ever thought otherwise, and the urge to flex your new muscles by pointing at the less evolved and shouting "bigot!" is strong. But I've spent the past 20 years watching that light go off in people's brains (including my own), and it's not something that happens according to a timetable, or in response to demands. While we work to banish LGBTQI discrimination from the law of the land, we should leave some sort of welcome mat for those would-be "bigots" who are coming around to the idea of gay acceptance more slowly. Because no matter who you are, when it comes to homosexuality, your understanding of the issue is different today than what it was 10 or 20 years ago.