The point is not whether Milk would have wanted to marry Smith. The point is that he lived in circumstances where it was possible for an openly gay and unmarried man to leave death benefits to his surviving partner.
But even more fascinating to me is the extent to which we hold on to the idea that we’re all just part of a struggling middle class, despite mounting evidence that a lot of us are just plain poor.
What that actually means is that both the Left and the Right in this country have succeeded in defining the center of politics as how you feel about identity. And as long as that’s true, that means the Right always wins.
