Progress.

Despite the gravity of announcing his personal support for same sex marriage, this is NOT a day for US President Barack Obama.

It's NOT a day for pundits, partisan media apparatchik, TV talking heads, political strategists and anyone else who makes a living sucking from the neck of a nearly dead democracy called the United Stated of America and will make non-stop, 24/7 hash out of the president's historic declaration.

It's NOT a day for those who'll seek to demonise President Obama -- to say nothing of the gay community -- for declaring 'war on the family' or 'war on marriage' or other such gibberish, especially by the Mormon son of a multi-millionaire who seeks to replace him in the White House. As I wrote on Facebook:

Mitt Romney -- who practices a religion that's been persecuted by fearful zealots for generations -- will push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage if he's elected president. The man's a walking, talking mannequin of hypocrisy.

No, today's a day for the gay men and women of the USA. The ones who absorb the subtle and not-at-all subtle slings and arrows of 'normal' society. The ones who accept sacrifices imposed on them by the ignorant and willfully blind and guilt-ridden and fearful and everyone who watches FOX News. The ones who want NOTHING from society besides the right to roll out of bed every day and be true to themselves, just like everyone else.

Or at least everyone else who seeks to live an honest life.

It took me a long time to grow up and become the marrying kind but am blessed to call Aradhna Sharma my wife. She and I overcame cultural hurdles on get married but I make no claim to understanding what it's like to have a legal system denying my right to marry my life partner.

Like many others who found today's declaration by the president, I'm fucking fed up with the moral hypocrisy of those who deny gay men and women the right to marry by pretending heterosexual marriage is a sanctified, rarified act of divine purity that's 'threatened' by same sex marriage when everyone not raised on an isolated compound recognises how barbarically heterosexuals have treated the 'holy sacrament' of marriage. How certain biblical commandments are bent or dismissed by straight people -- infidelity, divorce, abandoning sick spouses for younger, un-sick ones (ie, 'pulling a Newt'), etc -- but an iron gate is dropped upon those of the same sex who seek society's blessing for becoming legally betrothed. It's all convenient, dishonest rule-making by a majority drowning in its own bullshit.

To deny a legally recognised commitment to a gay couple on the basis it breaks 'natural law' is no different than denying equal access to the handicapped ("If God wanted her to enter the DMV unassisted He would have given her LEGS! Praise Jeebus!"), equal rights to minorities ("Let the colored use the same public toilets as whites? It's uncivilised and a stain on the South!"), and suffrage to women ("Why burden that pretty little lady with the difficult task of casting a vote? That's a man's job don't ya know.") Soon will come the day a conservative's standard response to gay marriage ("What's next? Legal incest? Legal bestiality? Oh, the horror!") will be considered as colossally backwards as those earlier examples of 'normal' thought.

President Obama was careful to note he doesn't favor federal legislation and supports states' rights to decide the issue on their own. Still, he's the first president of the US to go on record as supporting same sex marriage. From my vantage point on the other side of the globe this is progress, and one of those moments that makes me proud to be a citizen of my often confounding homeland.

UPDATE:
Jon Stewart, in his inimitable way, carries the 'progress' theme further: