Politicians vs Activists

Some people -- and I'm thinking here specifically of JC, as well as some of Sully's readers -- don't seem to get the distinction between the two.

Of course Obama, as a rather smart politician, is going to make a list of priorities which will be motivated by concerns and calculations beyond simply Doing What Is Right. That's the job he was elected to do.

That's not the job of activists, which is what Sully is being on this particular issue. It is the job of activists to ignore that kind of political calculus and focus exclusively on Doing What (they feel) Is Right.

And naturally, those two agendas are going to be at cross purposes until such time as public will causes them to intersect. Martin Luther King didn't wake up one day, give the I Have A Dream speech, and poof! the Civil Rights Act was passed. There was a long history of marches and demonstrations and repression and violence and murder that led up to it.

I believe, looking at the similarly long history of the battle for LGBT equality, that we are in the endgame. Within a handful of years the dam will burst, DADT and DOMA and the rest will be tossed aside, and love and justice will triumph over hate.

That doesn't mean I'd expect those on the front lines of that battle to take their foot off the gas, now that the finish line is in sight.