I didn't catch last Sunday's "60 Minutes" interview with Fox News' superstar Bill O'Reilly, but I'm informed that O'Reilly told Mike Wallace he was in favor of civil unions for gays (albeit such unions would be open to "all" who wanted them) and favored gay couples adopting as a "last resort," to keep kids out of the system of orphanages and foster care.
Along with Rush Limbaugh, O'Reilly is an icon of populist conservatism. That he breaks with conservative orthodoxy at all on civil unions and adoption is a sign of progress. If it weren't for the hot-button issue of gay marriage and the intense backlash it has engendered (increasingly our "bridge too far," for now), the scope of gay advancement would be much more apparent.
Evidence of this can be found in last Sunday's Washington Post, which began a series of articles on "Young and Gay in Real America." The first installment, which dominated the front page and continued on two full pages inside, told the story of an openly gay teenager named Michael Shackelford who lives in a small town in Oklahoma and longs for marriage with the right man and a white picket fence. Despite the hardships (being taunted and ostracized, and his more activist friend had his car keyed), Michael's life is vastly better than it would have been just a decade ago. He's out -- not entirely voluntarily. He's dated a number of guys -- in a small Oklahoma town! He hasn't joined the Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school, but it attracts about a dozen gay members. He goes to a gay youth group and a gay dance in Tulsa. He sends a note to a classmate (who, alas, turns out not to be gay). He has no qualms asking an Abercrombie clerk if he's gay. He goes to Barnes & Noble to buy a book on how to be gay.
What this shows is how much progress there has been in a
generation. Rather astounding, and mostly beneath the
radar.