I don't rightly know what's going to happen. Here's what I do know: some of us will be very happy about those decisions, and some of us won't be.
Regardless of what happens tomorrow in the Supreme Court, though, it may well be the Boy Scouts who are the cultural tipping point in the American gay rights movement.
About a month ago, the Boy Scouts reversed their long-standing policy on admitting gay Scouts. This is a policy that the organization has successfully defended, for many years, in both trial court and the court of public opinion. This is also a policy that, just 6 months ago, deprived a perfectly-qualified boy from receiving his well-deserved Eagle Scout badge.
As it happens, that perfectly-qualified boy has a Mom who knew how to use an online petition site. His story went viral on social and traditional media, and eventually he was on "Ellen," and 4 months later the Boy Scouts reversed the policy on gay Scouts. What the organization didn't reverse is the policy on allowing gay Scoutmasters, so - taking a cue from Menudo, who did after all bring us the fabulous Ricky Martin - once you're 18 and gay, you're out, Scout.
Unsurprisingly, not everyone was happy about the Boy Scouts' new policy, and that includes its members. The people most unhappy about the change are generally pegged at either end of the political spectrum: the Right-Wing Conservative Christians are outraged by the imagined moral transgressions that they believe violates a Bible that they probably haven't read all the way through (and most assuredly don't seem to understand as they should), and the Left-Wing Queer-Identified feel that the Menudo policy is unjust and a missed opportunity and not enough and all the things that folks are understandably prone to feeling when civil rights are being violated.
To the first group, I can only ask that you actually read the New Testament, in particular, all the way through and find the place wherein Jesus condones bigotry, fear and discrimination. To the second group, I will note that baby steps are more significant than you might realize.
Baby steps are intentional, and studied, and practiced, and aware. We would do well as adults to stay as present with our own forward motion as our babies do when they learn to walk.
Baby steps don't always take us as far as we'd like. But, as a parent who watched with video-taking fascination as her own child took her first steps, I am of the opinion that baby steps are monumentally significant. Baby steps are how human beings learn to walk and run and move through the world with ease. Baby steps are more difficult to learn and undertake than the unconscious ones we take when we're older and more experienced.
Baby steps are an effort.
In short, this is "family values" festooned with a kercheif and helping an old lady across the street. And now that image can be personified by an openly gay kid, one who I like to imagine sashaying across the street as fabulously as he deems necessary in order to do his civic duty with pride. There will be a generation of boys who will have gay friends at a younger age than the those before them, and - to shamelessly invoke Whitney Houston, because invoking Whitney is like the opposite of Godwin's Law, and glitter might just pour out of you screen at the mention - the children are our future. Teach them well, and let them lead the way.
The Boy Scouts have drawn a line in the sand that says more than "gay people are accepted": the natural by-product of this means that scouts of the anti-gay persuasion are now the outsiders. Bigots will now be the ones to leave the Boy Scouts if they don't agree with the policy. Scout Law requires its members to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. At long last, the Boy Scouts have determined that few of these adjectives jibe with "bigoted."
This fundamental and voluntary policy change is a hugely important, hugely indicative, hugely surprising and a hugely welcome baby step toward an American culture that willingly accepts a person who doesn't fit neatly into a Christianity-driven hetero-normative paradigm. Praise [insert your favorite deity].
Appreciate it. Notice it. Hope for more progress and work passionately towards it, too. But don't let a seemingly distant horizon interfere with your ability to acknowledge the importance of forward motion. It may seem slow, but it is happening. Believe.
I myself am filled with hope for tomorrow's decision, and I'm not letting that hope affect the appreciation I have for the progress that we've made as a culture. At some point, and perhaps sooner than many of us think, the marriage equality tides will turn because our cultural acceptance of people as fundamentally human beings will evolve.
The Boy Scouts, after all, just turned their canoe around willingly, and that boat's been paddled stalwartly in the same direction for over 100 years.
