The nine hour drive home from Nashville can be eye-crossingly boring. I reluctantly passed by Dollywood in favor of listening to the continuing saga of a Janet Evanovich audiobook. One McDonalds with Elvis all over the walls blends with another rocking chair on a Cracker Barrel porch until the Blue Ridge Mountains appear just in the nick of time. Only a sporadic NPR signal saved me from driving off a cliff.
Our dearly beloved Vice President got me wondering, what does the President think of gay marriage? One answer might be, “Who cares?” After all, we know he is a constitutional law scholar and downright brilliant. We also know he ate dog meat as a child in Indonesia because if we were a kid, in that part of the world, we’d eat what our parents gave us too. One culture’s delicious blue cheese is another’s smelly mold. But watching the polls on gay marriage ‘evolve’ in this country is inspiring: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/same-sex-marriage-support_n_1499247.html
Listening to the White House Press Secretary dance around good ole Biden’s plainspeakin’ ways and say that the President’s opinion on gay marriage “…is what it was” made me smile. And now the Republicans would just love to force his hand on this, but don’t let them set the agenda for us Mr President. If Mitt could carry his dog on top of his car at one time in his life, we know he wouldn’t do that again today. If Mitt can embrace health insurance reform in MA, we know he can and did ‘evolve’ and would like to destroy it for the rest of us. Surely Mr President, you can continue to help breathe life into our Constitution. Remember that gay rights are human rights, and that words have meaning.
Here are some shots of Ann Patchett’s independent bookstore in Nashville where anyone can stroll in and play the piano. Browsing among books is a guilty pleasure for this word nerd. We Americans are an independent lot. We respect truth in politics, and in fact we long for it. We give you permission Mr President to keep evolving, along with the rest of us.
MountainMornings 