Celebrate the Victories

I've been doing a re-watch of Queer As Folk and I'm finding that it's still entertaining, perhaps surprisingly, still relevant, at least insofar as it possibly represents a white gay male experience.*

Token lesbians Mel and Lindz aren't half as annoying as they were when I first watched the series 10 years ago (or so), perhaps due to my being, ahem, older now and finding myself relating more to them.

Emmett has remained my favorite of the gay male characters and I alternate between rolling my eyes at Brian Kinney and respecting his moral code. He is unashamedly an ethical slut, honest about his open relationships, as opposed to who I think of as The L Word equivalent, Shane, who is both promiscuous and capital-D-for-drama dishonest about it.

During a recent episode I watched, I appreciated a quote from PFLAG Mom Extraordinaire, Debbie. In context, the gay community was out in the streets celebrating the defeat of an anti-gay politician on election day. She says, to Emmett:

"Mourn the losses, because they are many. But celebrate the victories, because they are few."

This sentiment seems to be where I'm at in my political thinking at the moment.

I won't begrudge the dreamers of the world their dreams. In many respects, I stand with them. What I've been struggling with as of late are are those who, with every victory, are the first to remind us that there are always more important things we should immediately be worrying about.

It's important, at least to my ability to think about this stuff on an ongoing basis, to take time to acknowledge progress when it happens, no matter how incremental it is, even if shitty other things are still happening.

By the way, two favorable SCOTUS opinions yesterday (one on reproductive rights and one regarding gun control) AND Elizabeth Warren fully endorsing Hillary Clinton in the same day?! (*cough* Bernie who? *cough*)

Be still my heart.

(*Signal boost: Logo's Noah Arc, focusing on the lives of a group of black gay men in LA, is also entertaining if you haven't seen it yet! It doesn't seem to be streaming on Netflix though, unlike QAF).