Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

There is dismay tonight in the Empire State. The resounding defeat of a bill in the Senate to grant - what a curious term, grant - the simple right to get married, to finally be equal in the eyes of the law, to gay and lesbian New Yorkers is yet another setback for the only group of Americans that can still be openly discriminated against. And no, I don't give a flying fuck what you think your god says is right or wrong, Senator Diaz, you cretinous hypocrite. Go officiate at Hiram Monserrate's wedding, buddy.

We as gays and lesbians are used to this. It was ever thus. We are easy to hate, and not because there is anything in us that makes hatred intrinsically possible, but because of bigotry borne in silence. We have always hidden in the shadows.

No longer. We have a long way to walk yet, but know this: history will yet spit on the grave of Ruben Diaz's bigotry. The day will dawn.