Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: Return Column
From: "Shelly Roberts" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 21:11:50 +0000

ROBERTS' RULES

by 

Shelly Roberts

CAN'T LOSE FOR WINNING

"So on Christmas Eve," explained my daughter-in-law, offspring of
Pentecostal Methodists, "We go to church early." (I could handle that.
Being often described as a Christmas and Easter religionist, this
would be one out of two.) 

"Then we come home, open personal presents and sometimes go out
caroling if it's snowed. Santa comes for the kids by morning."

They're in Michigan, and this year I've decided to desert the Southern
winter warmth for the Northern internal glow of marshmallow'd hot
chocolate and some Jack Frost nose nipping. And to make new marks on
my mental door-edges for grandchildren, all of whom are the smartest,
cutest, most well-behaved children in America, and whom I've not seen
in a few years, and never for THE holidaze.

"Oh yes, and there's one more thing" she continued. "I want to tell
you about the plans for your visit . . ."

And there's one thing I want to tell YOU. This is going to be an
incomplete column. Oh sure, I'll use the usual number of words so the
top reaches all the way down to the bottom. It's just that I want to
warn you that I don't know how this story comes out yet. You'll have
to come back next month for the finale. But anyway. . .

". . . I have somebody I want you to meet."

Oh-oh. My daughter-in-law was setting me up. On a date. A blind date.

This is a test. This is only a test. Let's see just how far we've
come. In spite of all the talking she and I have done about nature,
nurture, intolerance and right-wing churches. Outside of her
upbringing. Was she going to try to offer up some handsome devil of an
opposing gender to tempt me back to the straight or narrow?

"Yessssss. . .?" I proffered cautiously.

"I met this really great lady I want you to meet when you get here.
She's single and funny and cute and smart, which is how I described
you to her."

There you have it.

She got it right. And I am sore amazed. Not at her. She's consistently
proves herself savvy and good enough for my perfect, brilliant,
handsome son. And able to reach beyond her earliest engrams. So, no,
that didn't actually surprise me. I'm floored, rather, by the
home-grownliness that brings proof to all of our last decade's work.

It couldn't be any clearer. We've won. As I've been telling you 
would happen for half a decade now. Some of you didn't believe me.
Some of you still don't.

In spite of Newt Gingrich and Ralph Reed. Regardless of the elected
defenders of marriage. Unmindful of the terrors of all our own
continuing closetists. Ok, sure there's still clean up work. But there
always is. And don't you be fooled by the killing of Matthew Shepard.
A profound tragedy, without question. But NOT a bellwether in the
on-going struggle. Bad guys who killed a good guy. It shouldn't have
happened. And it sensitized a whole bunch more of our allies. So it
wasn't a pointless death. But it was a far more isolated incident than
ever in our progression. Besides, I don't recall ever promising you
there wouldn't be bad folk out there. Or that everyone would invite
you to dinner. But, hey, nobody gets invited to all the dinners, so
why should we, in our on-going quest for permission to be boring, be
any different? We shouldn't.

Oh, yes, one other thing happened the same week as my D-I-L's call:
The State of Georgia, where I proudly now reside, also home to Rep.
Gingrich and Senator Sam, the former home of late Gov. Lester "Stay
out of my restaurant!" Maddox, the place I always referred to as
OmigodI'vemovedtoGEORGIA - are you ready for this? - overturned its
sodomy laws. That's right. Georgia. Done. Bubba knows his
half-sister's gay. So we're not illegal here. If that's possible,
everything is.

In the olden, feminist days, we used a terribly optimistic (is that an
oxymoron?) expression. ". . . in my lifetime." It was more a plaint
than an actual hope at the beginning. That we would reach at least
some goals before we joined Dan'l Webster paying for our own
particular bargains with Beelzebub. It's not something I think I ever
heard in the glbt wars. I guess this community, under too many
thousand years of cruelty, never really considered the possibility we
might succeed while we were still oxygenating.

But, in case you missed it, let me repeat myself. My cute, Midwestern
daughter-in-law, giddy as any Dolly Levy making matches, and as matter
of fact as gum, is setting me up on a blind date WITH ANOTHER WOMAN!

In MY lifetime.

Sometimes I really think our allies are light years ahead of us.

I wonder what I'll wear? I wonder if she really is smart? And funny? I
wonder how this story will all come out? Now that, in my lifetime,
I've taken care of the Vietnam war, Civil rights, women, and GLBT
oppression, I've got decades left, I wonder what's next? 

Stay tuned.

______________

(C) 1998. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. A one-time simultaneous
print right is hereby granted to subscribing newspapers; all other
rights, including electronic or digital reproduction are reserved.
Must be reprinted only in its entirety.

Shelly Roberts is an internationally syndicated columnist, journalist
and author of the 1999 Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Life daily calendar.
(Spinsters Ink.)