Guess who's coming to dinner.

My grandmother used to say that "idle hands are the devil's tools," and that's the only way I can think of to explain politicians who build their entire careers on continuing attempts to prevent recognition of same-sex marriages. Take California state senator Pete Knight, for instance. Although he lost three legislative attempts--two when he was in the state assembly and another when he became a state senator--to ban recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states, he has made California the next battleground on this issue by qualifying an initiative for the March 2000 ballot. (In truth, it has always tickled me that Pete is the only one in the state with a truly gay agenda.)

Since my definition of an optimist is a person who knows how terrible the world can be and is, therefore, never disappointed, I think this fight actually may not be a terrible thing for our community. It shows that the far right feels it has only one viable issue left on which to froth, fund-raise, and fume--and that issue no longer includes opposing our ability to work or go to school or our rights to be free from discrimination and violence. Those issues, it seems, are so mainstream that, even though every day there are egregious instances of such discrimination, no one insists that such treatment is supportable or a fine old American tradition.

That leaves the issue of gay marriage and related family ties.

Of course, we are not the first movement to experience this slow progression of acceptance. Remember the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Years after the passage of federal civil rights legislation, the issue of interracial marriage still raised such hackles that the film stimulated discussions at dinner tables all across the country. And most of that discussion was about sex--especially sex that was considered unusual, forbidden, or just plain yucky.

Well, guess who's coming to dinner now: The last great battle of this century will be fought over whether morality will be defined purely in the sexual arena or whether it should include the stuff that all major religious spend most of their time making rules about--loving God and one's fellow humans, feeding the poor, caring for the sick, not judging others, etc. So long as the far right can rivet the nation's attention solely on sex and define acceptable behavior narrowly, it can divert the public's focus from curbing runaway corporate profits, reforming health maintenance organizations, and spending money on the good works that need doing.

Because gay men and lesbians are primarily defined by others in terms of sex and sexuality, we are definitely part of the far right's agenda. That doesn't mean we should run away from that sexual definition. Instead, we should define ourselves as full human beings who not only are sexual but also work, love our families, and are found everywhere.

I am advocating the fiercest fight we have yet mounted to defeat this bogus and desperate last-gasp ploy by the Right. And it is a ploy. Does it strike anyone else as strange that California will have a referendum on the recognition of gay marriages performed in other states when there are no states that allow us to marry? This oddity makes it even easier to understand the diversionary, scape-goating agenda behind the initiative, which also affords the Right the added bonus of forcing us to use enormous resources, person power, and time to defeat it.

Despite all that, I am really going to enjoy defeating this (insert scatological word of your choice). I encourage every person in California to stand up against it. If passed, the initiative would not ban gay marriage in California--that legal ban is already in place. Rather, it would carve out a singular exception to the constitution's requirement that each state give full faith and credit to the judgments of other states. If you are married to your first cousin in New Jersey, a marriage not allowed in California, you are still married when you go to Los Angeles. If you divorce your spouse in a state with a waiting period shorter than California's, you are still divorced when you move to San Francisco.

Call this Knight-mare what it is--another cynical wedge issue. And I think we can win. See, I really am an optimist. The real kind.