The narratives emerging from last night's nomination spectacle are complex, but here's one that may be overlooked amidst all the unity hype and Clinton genuflection: speaker after speaker drew an arc of emancipation that stretched from women through native Americans to blacks and, now finally included in the line-up, gays and lesbians. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, all mentioned the fight for equality that has taken gays and lesbians out of the shadows of American life, and embedded it firmly in the long history of other Americans fighting for equality before the law.
Considering that history - Bill Clinton signed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act [1], a discriminatory piece of legislation unconstitutional on its face, and even ran ads campaigning on that signature - that's a remarkable development.
And today, on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech [2], as America somewhat disbelieving [3] prepares to elevate a black person to the pinnacle of power, the American family continues to expand. There's still a rocky road ahead, and we may never reach the conclusion of it; it's naive, for example, to believe that Barack Obama's nomination alone will exorcise forever the demons of racism. But today, this great, troubled nation of ours stands on the mountaintop and looks towards a promised land.
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