Not serious, of course, but one thing I'm proud of about this sucky blog was being unabashedly pro-gay rights (all kinds, including marriage equality) and writing about it at a time when plenty of straight liberals were pretty squishy about the issue. Back in the early days of the blog I was probably still kind of an idiot about these things, but there weren't a lot of straight people with even a sucky blogger's public platform who did address these issues. Gay people didn't need my (or that of any other straight people's) validation, but maybe a few straight people who otherwise wouldn't have had some connection to the views of gay writers/activists might have learned a thing or two from my links, if not my stupid thoughts.
More generally, I think once upon a time the liberal blogosphere helped to knit together a set of issues which eventually became an a basic liberal issue bloc. Gay rights are human rights. Economic justice is justice. We all don't have to agree about everything, but totebagger cafeteria liberalism has long been a big problem. Oppose gay rights and you're an asshole. Fine if you're fine with that, but you're still an asshole, and not a very liberal asshole.
Squishy liberals went from opposing same-sex marriage for mostly the same reasons conservatives did, to opposing gay marriage on "practical" electoral politics, to not opposing it. I like to think I played a tiny part in pushing that along. The point isn't to give myself a cookie, the point is to be glad I was a part of something historic even if in a microscopic unmeasurable way.
Things changed fast. Decades of activism of all kinds by (mostly) gay people is ultimately what made it happen, but hopefully I did what I could as an ally. I couldn't do anything stop the stupidest fucking war aside from World War I, but maybe we all helped just a little bit to win this one.
For once "nobody could have predicted..." can be written without it being sarcasm.
