It just seems less earthshattering

Yesterday, Oregon started allowing marriage equality.  As I tweeted, my kids are the same.  My youngest asked me in the car "Did Oregon start allowing gay marriage today?  Didn't that happen a long time ago?"  I said a judge found the law unconstitutional.  His response, "oh".  He could have been asking if it was going to rain tomorrow.  Clearly he doesn't understand the struggle that's go on over the past 40 years, but I think he looks at it like we look back other wrongs from the past, that it just seems so foreign to him to him.  As if "how could people think that way?".

It's not to say it's not a big deal, even I find myself getting less excited about these things.  Maybe it's the inevitably of it, or that it just seems so obvious that it's the right thing and I believe the world sees it that way too,, crazy fanatics notwithstanding.  I'm happy, and I'll be really happy when everyone has equal rights to get married, keep their jobs, get housing, etc.  Maybe successes have made me unexcited about more recent successes.

It was the same thing with Michael Sam.  I'm glad he was drafted, but for me his sexuality wasn't the big deal the media made it out to be.  He's clearly not the first gay man to play in the NFL and he won't be the last.  His courage to come out was the story, because he's going into a place that may not welcome him, but for the most part people did.  I'm sure he'll be called names on the field and it will be a big controversy, but I bet he is called names every day but that doesn't make the news.

I sometimes get the feeling that the reaction to Sam and to gay marriage is straight people patting themselves on the back for being so "open- minded".

I know the struggle goes on and that there are lots of people with hate in their hearts (no matter how they justify it) and that will go on, but the fact that my 13 year old son thought that same-sex couples having the right to marry seemed like the most obvious thing tells how far we've come.  It's probably not something I thought about when I was 13.