Stewart v Vermont

I often wonder about the struggle for gay rights. Actually, I hate the term gay rights; howsabout calling it gay equality, because that's really what it's about. Equality. We have all these folks, including myself, blustering and filibustering on both sides of the issue. It's right. It's immoral. It's fair. It's a perversion. Sometimes it takes a clown, or in this instance, a comedian, to take the whole idea of equality and turn it into a punchline. Albeit a punchline filled with common sense and understanding.

Jon Stewart performed at the University of Vermont last weekend. That's right, Vermont, in the midst of its own war for and against gay equality. Still, with a sharp tongue and a punchline, Jon Stewart was able to make sense of it all, and maybe that's a good thing. Get the people to laugh, and maybe, just maybe, they'll start to think....and rethink.

"I can understand being against gay marriage — if they decided to make it mandatory. This isn’t a cultural divide: They’re wrong.”

Stewart even tackled the so-called gay agenda, a term that most anti-gay groups like to use as nauseum.

"Here’s the gay agenda: [t]hey’d like to get married ... and fight in the military and march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.”

And, of course, he could not let those who use the Bible to vote against equality off the hook so easily. To those folks who use the Book of Leviticus in their arguments, Stewart suggests that we should begin to adhere to the book’s taboo on eating shellfish.

“Why aren’t we shutting down the Red Lobsters?”

But seriously folks, in his standup routine, in which he took aim at a variety of topics, not just gay equality, Stewart was able to get people thinking. Make them laugh at the joke, and then they might think about the joke, and how, really, it isn't so funny after all, because, in the end, all we really want to do is get married, serve in the military and march in a St Patrick's Day parade.

Is that too much to ask?

from the Burlington Free Press