By Marianne Williamson
America has had a non-violent revolution.
As long as there are historians writing about the United States, this moment of fundamental re-alignment of our national purpose will be remembered, pored over and analyzed. It will be seen as one of the shining points along the evolutionary arc of the American story. Yet it will never submit itself to being summed up in a nice little package that reason alone can understand.
It's been noted before that Americans get excited about politics every forty years. Then, in the words of comedian Will Rogers, "We have to go sleep it off."
We were certainly excited in the l960's. And this is 2008; exactly forty years since the most dramatic and violent year of the Sixties decade: the year when both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were literally killed before our eyes.
Several years ago, I was asked to appear on Larry King to discuss the legalization of gay marriage. I don't know why they chose me exactly, except that I was a straight person who would vote PRO. In any case, I spoke to a gay friend of mine before going on the program, and he gave me the strongest argument I had heard yet for why gay people should be allowed to be married:
"All these years, they've harped on us because we don't live a 'traditional' lifestyle," he said. "Now we want to do the most traditional thing in the world, and they won't let us!" That sealed the deal for me.