No smoking, no drinking, no talking

The year is 1994. I'm about to start Grade 9. High school, all new, Big And Scary.

One day, shortly before school is to start, my then-best friend calls me. "We have a problem," she announces. "The gym teacher...is a lesbian."

I was shocked and horrified. She's a lesbian! She likes girls! But she's allowed in our locker room??? Apparently her OFFICE is IN our locker room???? Why is this even allowed? I felt like someone should tell a grownup or something, but I didn't tell my parents for fear they might lock me in my room forever for knowing what a lesbian is or for having a course schedule that puts me in the general vincinity of an alleged lesbian or something.

So off I went to my doom. Not just high school, not just gym class, but high school gym class with a lesbian. And when we got there she...taught us gym. And then the next day she taught us gym. And every day after that she taught us gym, perfectly competently, with the occasional glimpse of humanity. Then the semester was over and I never took gym again and she became irrelevant.

Other things were happening around that time, in the background, in the media. On Friends, Ross's ex-wife was a lesbian. And she was...there, sometimes, when the plot demanded it. Ellen DeGeneres came out, and she was...there, on TV, I wasn't paying much attention. I found out Graham Chapman was gay, and that...didn't change anything, actually. And so it continued, every once in a while I'd find out someone was queer, and, except for the people who ended up being my friends, they'd just go on being ultimately irrelevant, like most people in the world end up being.

This is why the situation in California surprises me so much.

I can see how people who have never been exposed to same-sex marriage might arrive at the visceral "OMG THAT'S WRONG!" reaction. That's how I thought in Grade 9, and the reason I thought that was was because homosexuality had only ever been presented to me as a problem, so I had no reason to think that it might be anything other than a problem. What it took for my homophobia to go away was not happy rainbows and sensitivity training, but rather the sheer innocuousness of every queer person that I ever encountered IRL or in the news.

But in California, they already have this. They had legal same-sex marriage for several months. And, after a brief flurry of "OMG George Takei! OMG Ellen and Portia! OMG octogenerian lesbians!" it just became irrelevant to everyone who isn't immediately involved. So why do they still care after months of evidence that it's harmless?

I thought I understood the thought process, but this has me flummoxed. They do know that it isn't mandatory, right?