Remember Horton Hears a Who, in which the swelling momentum of all the Who voices were finally heard thanks to one fantastic elephant? I feel like that’s what’s currently happening for our community as allies such as Gov. Christine Gregoire and Gov. Martin O’Malley are joining in on the rally cry that a person’s a person, no matter how gay.
In Dr. Seuss’ story, Horton the Elephant starts to hear noises coming from a small speck of dust, which he realizes is actually a tiny planet, home to Whoville, a microscopic community. The community’s mayor asks Horton to protect them from harm, which the large and loyal elephant agrees to, saying again and again: “even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.”
I’m no film critic and I’m certainly not drawing multiple references to gay rights here, but at the end of the story, Horton is ridiculed for his belief in the rights and existence of Whoville and its inhabitants. The other animals in the jungle try to force him into a cage and plan to boil the speck containing Whoville, while Horton begs the mayor and all the Whos to cry out so the animals can hear them, proving their existence.
It takes the entire town of Whoville to scream out and make lots of noise with horns and anything else they can find to create the swelling of clatter, trying so desperately hard to save their lives. But it’s a “very small shirker named JoJo” whose random assemblage of musical instruments finally creates enough racket for the volume to swell to the surface of the planet and flow out into the jungle animals’ ears.
With the recent passage of marriage equality in Washington State thanks to the bravery of Catholic Gov. Christine Gregoire and the expected signature of Gov. Martin O’Malley to pass marriage equality into law in Maryland, I am on the edge of my proverbial seat, waiting with baited breath to see who will be the next one of our allies to add their voice to the swelling chorus to finally reach the masses. We are screaming out to not be hated, hurt or have laws passed preventing us from legally marrying our darlings, our sweethearts, the ones we’d give everything for. It’s just overwhelmingly nice to have allies out there who aren’t gay, don’t need to get “gay married” but yet they’re taking the time (and sometimes the political risk) to add their voices to ours for the chance that our rights might not die in a boiling pot of oil.
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