Things we never said come together
The hidden truth no longer haunting me
Tonight we touched on the things that were never spoken
That kind of understanding sets me free
--Elton John
Mark Morford reports:
It was one of those surreal, suspended moments, an unexpected little hiccup in the otherwise bleak sociopolitical continuum where you couldn’t help but pause and gasp and sit back and let your bitter cynicism and your hard-won ennui fall away and actually allow yourself, for now, just this once, really and truly believe what you were seeing.
Could it really be happening? Was there really any way in hell a straight white male BushCo-era Republican would dare step up to a live microphone in front of a TV camera in a major American city and honestly admit that, well, he was wrong, and he is very sorry, and he has now officially reversed his position and now fully supports gay marriage and will actually sign a city council resolution acknowledging and advocating same?
And furthermore could this politician, during said cynicism-defying announcement, actually choke back tears — real, human tears, not the fake, creepy kind you see from, say, Ted Haggard or Larry Craig or Lynne Cheney after four martinis and an hour staring at her husband — such a genuine display of emotion that you can’t help but think it might actually be coupled to a living, breathing human soul?
Yes, it happened. Just recently, down in San Diego. Jerry Sanders is the politico, and he’s apparently very much a (moderate) Republican mayor and a former police chief, and he apparently has a gay daughter no one really knew was gay and members of his mayoral staff are also gay and somehow, some way, both these facts played into his decision to reverse his position on gay marriage and go public in what has to be one of the most honest, humble and heartfelt public displays of ideological evolution by a Republican since … well, I can’t even think of any. Can you?
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