Regular visitors to SummitLake.com have been treated to a wandering festival of our interests and preoccupations this year. Our household has weathered a major surgery, a death in the family, an unexpected move and new commute regimen, and occupational uncertainties and vicissitudes. As chronicled by our intrepid C.Bear, this year has certainly had its personal losses and triumphs.

These pages reflect this, too. From the tone of the Bear Stories, to personal notes recorded in our Commentary section and even logged in Computers -- we've shared experiences and observations from just another household, pretty undistinguishable from so many others in America.

Ours is a gay household, as readers here know, and SummitLake.com integrates this fact of life into the fabric of our entire site. Parallelling life itself, not every issue is a GLBT issue. Nor is it wise to become a single-issue person or a single-issue site. On the one hand, free speech needs to be exercised in every realm of life, not just address a single hobby or passionate political cause. On the other, rights, like any other abstract principle, lose meaning and applicability when exercised only in a single narrow context. Rights and ideas need to be applied in multiple instantiations to maintain health and universality.

Such is gay life in America that we can and do spend most of our web-mastering time on issues that are not exclusively (or even particularly) the domain of GLBT concerns. In our view, which not everyone shares, winning acceptance in mainstream America is not primarily about living an exemplary life as a gay person. It is primarily about living the best life we know how as citizens, co-workers and neighbors. To the extent that we have succeeded in winning personal acceptance as human beings who happen to be gay (where before we met reluctance or obvious barriers), it is because of this strategy of living life for its own sake.

It is no coincidence that living life for its own sake is also a key ingredient for success in attaining our goals, for those of us who happen not to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. It is the uninformed observer who might say, "See? They have abandoned the gay community, they have forgotten our gay causes."

No matter who we are, it is not enough to live an exemplary life. We need the support of friends and loved ones, a level playing field, and an infrastructure that affords protections and redress equally to all.

We continue to support those causes we like. In the belief that gay rights are but one of many instantiations of civil liberties, we continue to promote those ideas which best advance civil rights for all.

People uninvolved in the gay community will rarely be motivated to work hard for rights perceived as  primarily benefitting gays. When those same rights are perceived as being applicable to all, they are seen as beneficial to all. Same-sex civil unions in Vermont may yet prove to be a public relations disaster, because they specifically exclude unmarried heterosexual couples. That mistake may not be of our doing, but mistake and injustice it certainly was.

With that, we'd like to move on abruptly to some current events of interest to the gay community.

• Elections: Whether Gore or Bush ultimately prevails, we see little change in the legal status of the gay community in the next four years. While we personally give both candidates failing marks for leadership, civics and grasp of good government, La Parola is aware of the potential dangers and  pitfalls of having a president with strong ties to the fundamentalist right-wing movement. A homophobic bent and a strongly authoritarian political advocacy are a dangerous combination for religious groups. We'll watch these carefully if Bush wins.
• Congress: With an almost evenly divided House and Senate, watch for stagnation of legislation on almost all fronts. With weak leadership and little obvious sense of national direction from the White House, look for little change in civil rights legislation, and weak bipartisan consensus on even the fundamentals of government, such as spending priorities.
• Cultural Fronts: With the strong current national focus on the economy, personal investments and career-building strategies, we see less importance attached to cultural baggage issues such as sex and sexual orientation, and more importance placed on what the individual can do. We see a stronger sense of personal responsibility for bringing out the best in others, and a definite backlash against the stereotyping perpetrated both by and upon older and earlier generations.
• Regional Differences: But, perceptions of fairness still vary heavily by region and even by county. We see regional areas as the primary geopolitical focus of the next four years for the gay community.
• "Dr. Laura" and the media: those who have followed this in detail know that this homophobic so-called Doctor has been dealt a series of crushing blows by the gay community and the resulting unfavorable media and advertiser attention. Thanks to the tireless canvassing and educational kits of GLAAD, The "Dr. Laura Show" has retreated to a backwater non-prime-time slot, with fewer and fewer national sponsors.

Who do we like?

• GLAAD, for its unrelenting efforts to expose and air GLBT bias wherever it is found in the media. Despite the fact we're a little sick of hearing about the Dr. Laura campaign, this kind of effort is absolutely essential for combating blind public acceptance of stereotyping and defamation of gays and lesbians in the media. GLAAD's tools rely on getting accurate information and a basis for fair play into the hands of key decision makers in the media, and they are extraordinarily effective.
• The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), for its effective and broad-based support for civil rights. Always the champion of the least-popular "little guy", the ACLU is a powerful national force for holding lawmakers and administrators accountable for those actions and excesses which unfairly target minority groups of all kinds. Despite a persistent public image as a band of left-leaning troublemakers and gadflies, the ACLU has done more to remind us that the law must be applied equally to all, than many other organizations which cater exclusively to the needs of specific ethnic or sexual target groups. For from promoting a particular brand of politics (as I admit I originally supposed), the ACLU premise seems to be that, if we are to be subject to a given law, it must be consistent with the core documents that would appear to sanction it, and it must be applied equally to all, rather than being used as tool to divide and suppress those whom we wish to exclude from full participation.

We're aware there are many other fine organizations working for liberty and justice in the gay and general communities. Rather than enumerating all organizations of which we've heard, for their contributions to the advancement of freedom, we mention here the two organizations with which, as supporters, we're most familiar.

As always, the viewpoints you read here are our own; La Parola is not affiliated with either organization, each of which is fully capable of clearly stating its own goals and objectives.

As we move into the next four years, we hope to continue to see more of you building strong ties in the general community, as well as contributing time and resources to the GLBT causes of choice. Take time out to watch the Drew Carey Show, or Saturday Night Live, or the History channel (whatever turns you on). Go on vacation. Do well in your careers. Most of all, don't forget to turn to your lover or partner and say, "I love you!"

Alex