Today marks five years since Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.  Not to bang on about it, but five years of legal gay marriage in Massachusetts, and still the sky hasn't fallen.  This could turn into one of those Second Coming situations, couldn't it?  I mean, two Thousand years and nada.  What if the sky never falls?  Then what?

The one thing about punishment from on high never coming to pass is that if you're so inclined you can always say it's still on its way.  Just you wait.  It's a worldview, innit?  A little medieval, but what are you gonna do?

I think it's an assumption that the more educated people are, the more they're able to deal with the varieties of diversity we find in modern society.  Liberal education, at its best, not only exposes us to diversity, but encourages us to embrace it in order to broaden our experience, deepen our understanding, and grow in our humanity. 

But the connection that people who assume education as a foundation of diversity sometimes miss is the one that exists between education and privilege.  So it is that one often overlooked aspect of feelings towards and expressions of sexual identity is class. 

One way to address homophobia is to look at it, in the long haul, as an issue that relates to class and income disparity in society.  It's not only homophobia, of course.  In societies where stratification of wealth is a perceived reality (rather than a hidden one), racism and antisemitism are a kind of perverse compensation for class inequality.

We will not move significantly beyond where we are with racism, homophobia and other forms of scapegoating until we start acknowledging that consciousness of class and the willingness to exploit it plays a significant role in it.  If you strip the usefulness of factionalism and the politics of hate to parties pursuing political power, there's no reason a secular society can't easily negotiate same-sex marriage. 

Even religious societies can accommodate a spectrum of definitions of family. Having said this, it's useful to remember that we don't live in a religious society.  We live in a society that allows religious societies the freedom to practice within it. To get caught up in arguments over which religions contemn and condemn who, is to ignore that these religions owe their freedom to contemn and condemn who they will to the same system that offers protection to those they contemn and condemn. 

Religion, which once had the role of government, is now one category in a constellation of affiliations that constitute our self-identity in a secular society.  Make no mistake, even for religious people, their religious identity as it is practiced in our society is made possible by and thus subsumed under their identity as citizens of a secular republic. 

I mention this because we keep coming back to religion when religion is not the overriding issue.  Even if many on both sides of the marriage equality debate frame it that way. As when gays get trapped into arguing that the standard for their marriages must be higher than for heterosexuals.  The rights and risks that accrue to married couples should accrue in equal measure to gays and straights.  Gays do not have to "behave" in order to "deserve" equal protection under the law.

The toadying up to heterosexuals on the issue of sexual mores is an authentic instance of "Uncle Tomming" on the part of gay men and lesbians.  It's cynical, patronizing, and a little pathetic.  But marriage, that most cynical of institutions, has been so sodden with sentimentality for so long, you can't really blame gays and lesbians for losing their heads sometimes. 

If it were just about "love" it would not be necessary to codify it in civil law.  But marriage equality is expressly, fundamentally about equal rights in a secular society in which there is no real, compelling reason not to afford them to gays.  If Leviticus 20:13 is your best argument against equal protection, I'm afraid it's just not good enough.  Let's move on.

Rather than focus on sexual mores, the gay movement, going forward, would be wise to focus on societal mores.  Working steadfastly towards a society in which the varieties of inequality are outed we'll reap the ongoing rewards of a society in which inequalities across the spectrum are addressed.   That's how the gay movement fits into the greater struggle that Americans of all stripes can get behind.