"You're supposed to marry the person you love, Mom"

The religious right wants us to believe that if one more state does what Massachusetts did and opens its marriage rolls to gays and lesbians, there will be a mighty conservative backlash. They will rise up and pass a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. They have already managed to amend 17 state constitutions to do so. However, James Esseks, litigation director of the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, tells me that he's less worried about state constitutional cases inspiring this kind of conservative reaction than about federal courts doing so. Though a loss in federal court might be a setback, a win would be even worse. A federal court decision against marriage for gay people would, essentially, result in the continuation of the status quo. A decision declaring marriage, as currently defined, to be a violation of the equal-protection rights of gay people could well be a pyrrhic victory. In the unlikely event that a federal court tells Congress that the U.S. Constitution requires gay marriage, Congress will certainly act to amend the Constitution.

It is in part because of my son and his generation that the fanatical right is so caught up in this idea of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to begin with. The Hamilton College Youth Opinion Poll surveyed graduating high school seniors in 2001 about their attitudes on gay issues. Two-thirds of them supported gay marriage, as compared with only one-third of adults. This generational shift has been consistent over the years, and there is no reason to think that my son and his friends in the open-minded majority won't continue to increase in number. Certainly, the Traditional Values Coalition is convinced that they will. That's why the foes of equality are so eager to change the Constitution to protect their narrow-minded agenda.

Still, even as things change, I worry that tolerance is not as inevitable as we hope and as they fear. Zeke is already embarrassed about the photographs I took of him as a toddler in the little pink nightie-and-peignoir set we bought him because he was jealous of his older sister's. Despite his easy acceptance of gay people and even the possibility of being gay, he would sooner be caught naked in the classroom than be seen playing with one of his little sister's baby dolls. And even our most broad-minded relatives and friends would get a little uncomfortable when they saw him decked out in full Divine regalia. It is worse when I explain that I hope Zeke is gay. Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.

I insist just as adamantly that I do not care if one or both of my daughters are gay. But in thinking about this issue, in writing about it, I have discovered something about myself, something that embarrasses me and makes me wonder about the pervasiveness of intolerance. I would support a gay daughter, I would embrace her, but even though I went through my own senior-year-of-college lesbian phase (I went to Wesleyan University; it was a graduation requirement), I have some discomfort with the prospect. Again, it's easy to joke about it. Would a lesbian daughter give me grief about shaving my legs? Would her girlfriend the Gestalt therapist bring bulgur salad to family potlucks? Both these jokes and the ones I make about my gay son redecorating my family room have as their core a kind of stereotyping. A prejudice. The stereotypical gay man is someone whose company I enjoy, someone who makes me laugh, someone I'd want my kid to be. The stereotypical gay woman makes me insecure, conscious of my failings as a feminist. I make less money than my husband; I rely on him for simple home repairs; I care too much about what I look like; I once got a Brazilian bikini wax.

But like all biases, mine are shopworn and musty clichés that have everything to do with my own insecurities and nothing to do with actual people. None of the gay men and women I know and love fit precisely into these categories. I worry that, just as under my own proud tolerance there lurks a kernel of unease, Zeke's easygoing broad-mindedness will fall victim to the world. But perhaps I'm not giving him and his generation enough credit. Maybe none of them will use words like "gay" and "faggot" as schoolyard barbs, or maybe some of them will react with anger if others do. After all, Zeke says you're supposed to marry the person you love, whoever and whatever that person happens to be. He says it's no big deal.

I hope so. I hope they are better than we are. I think they might be. When he came down to breakfast and saw the San Francisco Chronicle with its banner headline "Judge Strikes Down Ban on Gay Marriage," Zeke thrust his fists into the air over his head and cheered, just like he does when Barry Bonds knocks the go-ahead run out of the park and into the waters of San Francisco Bay.

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