From: "Shelly Roberts" Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 21:11:50 +0000 Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: Return Column 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.)