I was driving home from lunch today, listening to Talk of the Nation like I always do in the car at lunchtime. They started talking about President Obama’s recent outreach to the LGBT community and the question was put to the callers as to whether Americans feel that their political leaders’ publicly (and loudly) expressed views really reflect the feelings on the ground about gay marriage. I tried to call and couldn’t get through, and by that time I was back at work anyway, so I ran inside and fired off a quick e-mail. Then I threw in my headphones and had a listen, and sure enough! "Here’s an e-mail from Nathan in Oklahoma City," said Neal Conan, who then read the words I’d punched out literally 60 seconds before:

"I live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and despite my state’s reputation as one of the most conservative areas in America, despite the fact that we are the home of such foaming-at-the-mouth anti-gay characters such as Sally Kern and Anita Bryant, I have to say that my husband and I have had almost no trouble with anti-gay sentiment. Even people who disagree with us on religious grounds are generally friendly – the attitude around here is that it’s no one’s business but our own. I would say that in Oklahoma, our politicians are very out-of-step with the populace. Most of the people I know could care less about anyone’s sexual orientation or whether gay marriage is legal or not.

As to President Obama, while I’ve been disappointed so far in the slow steps the administration has taken, I think we have to remember to keep in mind that only six months have passed since the Inauguration. I think we should remember that there are a lot of things going on right now. Gay people will still be here and ready to marry once we’ve tackled some of these more pressing issues."

I wanted to add in about how Clinton’s failure to pass health care in his first term, and the Republican resurgence of 1994, is occasionally attributed, in part, to the huge amounts of political capital he wasted on both sides of the aisle with the battle that eventually gave us "don’t ask don’t tell." Nothing irritates me more about the gay community than when we start acting like our issues should be at the top of everyone’s agenda, and damn everything else to hell. It doesn’t do anything for our image as a community except makes us look selfish and myopic. While it’s good to remind the President that we’re here, to keep ourselves on his agenda, let’s not pretend like we should be the top priority right now.