May 21, 2004  |  By: Kevin Riordan  | COMMENTS     

president himself, “I’m just guessing, but my guess is he hasn’t thought much about it,” Sullivan says. “He hasn’t even said the word ‘gay.’ That in itself is revealing.”

Meanwhile, despite Bush’s support, the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage “is just sitting there” in Congress, says Sullivan, who likens the notion to “writing graffiti on a sacred monument.”

All the more reason why it’s incumbent upon gay people and other same-sex marriage advocates to “argue [the case] until you’re blue in the face, until you can’t talk any more,” he says.

Although he declined to predict when same-sex marriage will become a reality, Sullivan clearly believes the momentum is with marriage equality.

“The younger generation is on our side,” he says. “They’ve grown up with gay people … and once we get marriage rights, it’s the beginning of the end of the gay rights movement.”

Elaborating later, via e-mail, Sullivan says, “I simply mean that marriage represents the apogee of our civil equality. Everything else is a mop-up operation. That end is a very long way off, but from the peak of marriage equality, it is visible. And it should be our aim.”