Evolving on gay marriage in a devolving culture

         I can only imagine the talk at the diner the morning after President Obama said he was in favor of marriage for gay couples.
     But most of what I have heard in public is a little like the backstage rehearsals of Fiddler on the Roof, with Tevye muttering, "On the one hand....yet, on the other hand."
     On the one hand, most Americans were raised to recognize marriage only between a man and a woman.  On the other hand, even the most devoutly conservative families have someone in the reunion portrait that they whisper about -- a funny uncle or a different aunt.
     On the one hand, we make fun of gay characters in our entertainment, find them amusing at best or disgusting at worst, but on the other hand, many of us know and work with homosexual people who are respected, successful, honorable, and, truth be told, envied for their self-defintion.
     On the one hand, we think that marriage is sacred, sealed with vows, traditions, commitment. On the other hand, half of the marriages you read about on the wedding pages will end in divorce, a bigger percentage will be marked with unfaithfulness, dysfunction, anger, violence.
     On the one hand, we insist on proper behavior in matters of sex. On the other hand, we take our kids for a walk down the boardwalk at the beach where they can see T-shirts using every vile word and graphic that we'd like to keep from tender young eyes.
     On the one hand, public displays of affection between gays, or choices in clothing or accessories, make some of us uncomfortable, but on the other hand, we may say nothing about a boy and a girl making out in the mall, or the crude, rude, lewd and vulgar bumper stickers or the fake bull testicles on the trailer hitch of the vehicle in front of us as we wait in bay bridge traffic, captives of bad taste.
    My thoughts are evolving. I'm ambivalent on many things, but I'm more open minded about people who others might shun, gay or otherwise, and my biggest shortcoming as a human is that I can't seem to accept hypocrites.