IGF CultureWatch

Sometimes we don't notice our victories until long after a battle has been won. Over the last couple of years, gay marriage has secured territory most people didn't even realize was contested, and its loss will be far more devastating to gay marriage opponents than their victories in all the court cases and all the elections in the world.

I'm talking about sweetness.

Our opponents demonize us -- sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly, but viciously and relentlessly. Their chief weapon is sex - ours, not theirs -- overlaid with a self-righteous piety that is funny when Dana Carvey does it, and wrongheaded no matter whose pursed lips it leaks out of. But while everyone from the Pope on down has been focused on the inherent disorders and immorality of homosexual sex, another front in the gay rights battle opened up: Gay teenagers in love.

This year saw a slate of prom stories across the south in Mississippi, Georgia and North Carolina, and while the outcomes varied, the facts were the same: lesbian and gay students wanted to take a date to the prom, a date consistent with their sexual orientation.

It's pretty unlikely any of these kids will show up in recruiting materials circulated by the National Organization for Marriage. Take a look at the pictures of these kids, and try to figure out how you'd attack them - or why you'd want to. If you want the ugly side of this debate, you have to go to the adults opposing them, ganging up against Constance McMillen and calling her selfish for daring to think she should be able to go to the prom and dance with her date just like her friends.

It is victory enough that teenagers in the South are now claiming their proms. But they're also claiming time on network television. Here are two gay teens kissing on "As The World Turns." And here is a sequence of scenes where Justin comes out on "Ugly Betty," after a four-year story arc.

Neither show is a cultural landmark. But in a way, that's the point. This kind of thing is well within the worldview of people now, barely worth commenting on.

"Ugly Betty," in particular, gave us a couple of things that are inevitable precursors to gay marriage. First, young Justin has a very openly gay mentor, Mark. The irresponsibility and selfishness of Mark's life melts away as he gently and understandingly leads Justin through the conflicts and torments of adolescence in a way that his straight family - though completely, even overly, sympathetic - can't. (And I don't pretend to any neutrality here - I'm a fan of the show; but even if I were less biased, I think the point holds). Helping Justin makes Mark a better man. Where has that story been hiding all these years? The last American generation of gay and lesbian kids who couldn't imagine having an older relative/friend/teacher who could understand them has passed into history.

Justin also has a supportive family. This is now fully within the imagination of gay teens, even those whose family is not. When Derrick Martin was kicked out of the house by his parents in Georgia after media attention over wanting to take his boyfriend to the prom, he got outside support that had no equivalent when many of us were his age. The idea that his parents might be the ones acting wrongly is available to him, and kids like him. That does not ease the emotional pain or harm his parents are inflicting on their son, but it is a safety net we have been able to provide to cushion his fall. More kids will have supportive families as time goes on, but even those who don't will be able to know that they are right to be honest with themselves, even if their families cannot handle the truth. These are kids who might even be able to be patient with their parents, and be able to repair the relationship over time.

And that brings me to the sweetness that pervades all this. When Justin finally comes out on "Ugly Betty," it is not by making any announcement, or saying anything at all. He simply holds his hand out to his boyfriend as an invitation to dance - to dance with everyone else at his family at his mother's wedding.

There was no clear and unambiguous image like that for those who grew up in earlier decades, and I can't imagine how valuable it will be in the years to come. It will, of course (along with many other positive images), be a foundation for kids who are coming to identify as homosexual. But more important, it will be there for all the heterosexual kids, with no fear in it, and no evil, nothing to worry about and nothing to oppose.

The lack of that sweetness is what has most afflicted the public perception of homosexuality throughout history. It comes from the failure to view homosexuals as people who love one another. Imagine what it must be like to envision a group of people who don't have love in their lives, just sex.

If I were Maggie Gallagher or Brian Brown or Martin Ssempa or Pope Benedict, I can't think of anything that would scare me more than the gentle joy of two high school girls holding hands, swaying to the music at their prom, or two boys dancing and laughing with the family at a wedding. After a centuries long fight, we've got those images fixed now, real ones and fictional, and they won't ever be going away.