Chapter Content
Okay, so like, I wanna talk about something kinda interesting today. It's about how we, like, totally miss big changes that are happening right under our noses. I mean, it's happened throughout history, right? Think about the fall of the Soviet Union. I mean, nobody saw that coming, like, *nobody*. You know, the journalists, the politicians, the experts, even the people living in Eastern Europe... everyone was completely blindsided.
And it's not just that. Even the dissidents, the ones who were actively fighting against the Soviets, *they* didn't see it coming. Like, Vaclav Havel, the guy who became the president of the Czech Republic, he even wrote about how the Soviet empire wasn't as strong as it seemed. But when the revolution actually started? He was complaining that people were cheering for Gorbachev! It's like, dude, you predicted this!
So, what gives? Why are we always so surprised by revolutions, big or small? I think it's because we're, like, looking in the wrong places for the signs. And a perfect example of this is the fight for gay marriage.
Think back to the 80s. Gay marriage wasn't even on the radar, you know? It was like a completely radical idea. There was this book called "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex," which was, like, *the* sex manual of the time. And it had this super negative view of gay people, saying they're, like, always cruising for sex, they can't have lasting relationships... you know, totally stereotypical stuff.
So, imagine trying to fight for marriage equality when that's what everyone believed. Evan Wolfson, this guy who really spearheaded the movement, he even had trouble finding a professor to advise him on his law school thesis about gay marriage! They all thought it was a lost cause.
And for a while, it looked like they were right. They made some progress, but then there was all this backlash. President Bush came out against it, state after state passed laws banning gay marriage. A lot of activists were ready to give up, thinking it was all moving too fast, too soon.
They even had a summit to figure out a long-term strategy, and they decided to go really slow, focusing on domestic partnerships and civil rights first. One of the leaders, Matt Coles, said that back then he thought it would take, like, *thirty or forty years* to win marriage equality in every state! But they were wrong. Within a decade, opposition to gay marriage just... disappeared. It was, like, the most significant shift in public opinion in, you know, *forever*.
So what happened? Well, I think it has to do with the stories we tell ourselves, the overstories. And these overstories, they're way more influential than we think. To illustrate that, let me tell you about a made-for-TV movie called "Doing Time on Maple Drive."
It's about this family, the Carters, who seem perfect on the outside, but of course, they're all messed up. And the youngest son, Matt, he's the golden child, but he's hiding a secret: he's gay. And he tries to kill himself rather than tell his family. It's super dramatic, right?
Now, this movie came out in 1992, right when people like Evan Wolfson were just starting to fight for gay marriage. So, did it help or hurt the cause? Well, this scholar, Bonnie Dow, she analyzed these kinds of movies from that era, and she found some common themes.
Like, first of all, gay people are never at the center of the story. It's always about how their sexuality affects the straight characters in their lives. And second, being gay is always a problem to be solved. Like, the gay character is miserable and isolated. And third, gay people are never seen in community with other gay people. They don't have gay friends, they don't go to gay events.
And "Doing Time on Maple Drive," it totally fits those rules. It's not about what it means to *be* gay, it's about how straight people react when they find out someone they know is gay. Matt tries to kill himself. And we never see him with other gay people.
So, these movies, they weren't as openly hostile as that sex manual I mentioned earlier, but they still reinforced the idea that gay people can't have real relationships. So, if you wanted to know if the world was ready for gay marriage, you couldn't just look at polls and elections. You had to look at the overstory.
And that's where "Will & Grace" comes in. "Will & Grace" was this sitcom that came out in 1998, and it was about a gay lawyer, Will, and his straight best friend, Grace. And the thing that was revolutionary about it was that it broke all those overstory rules.
The gay characters were central to the story. Homosexuality wasn't a problem to be solved. And gay people hung out with other gay people. Will & Grace was just... a normal guy. It showed that gay people were capable of loving and being loved. They were defined by the strength of their relationships.
Now, when "Will & Grace" first came out, some people in the gay community hated it because it was too sanitized, too mainstream. But in the end, it was deeply subversive because it changed the way people thought about gay people.
There's this concept called tipping points. It's like, once you get to a certain percentage of people who support a new idea, the rest of the group quickly falls in line. But the change isn't gradual. Nothing happens until you hit that tipping point, and then everything happens.
And that's what happened with gay marriage. All those years of watching "Will & Grace" had started to add up. Suddenly, people were more open to the idea. And in 2012, things started to change. Gay marriage started winning at the ballot box.
Evan Wolfson's team even did focus groups with people who had changed their minds, and they found that the number-one place where people were hearing about the issue was television. Even Republican Senator Rick Santorum admitted that "Will & Grace" had a huge impact on changing people's attitudes about gay marriage.
So, the lesson here is that we need to pay attention to the overstories, the cultural narratives that shape our thinking. Because sometimes, the biggest changes are happening right in front of us, on our TV screens, and we're too busy looking in the wrong places to see them. The tide turns, you know, it shifts and changes. Thanks for listening.