In and Out

Writes a gay Republican prominent in the Eisenhower White House and ever since:

“I went to see In and Out [the current Kevin Kline hit]. Ahead of me in the line were a couple and three kids. I heard the father order the tickets: ‘Two adults for The Game, three children for In and Out.’ We have come a distance!”

I’ll be brief. I know this stuff offends a few of you and doubtless bores others. But it’s worth comment how America is confronting this until-very-recently taboo and scary subject . . . considering the issues on their merits . . . and in relatively short order accepting yet another minority into the national fabric.

I don’t know if you saw Ellen on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno a week or two ago, but it doesn’t get much more mainstream than that. It was very funny. In and Out is very funny. It’s all part of what I believe they call “the human comedy.” As long as people are law-abiding, productive citizens, let’s just laugh at our differences and profit from our diversity.

This is the attitude that seems to have won over many Democrats and more than a few Republicans. (The libertarians of course were never in doubt.)

When Charles and I went up to Boston last week for my 25th business school reunion, it went as I’ve found these things always do — the wives all over Charles when they find out he designs a prominent clothing line many of them wear; the husbands trying to figure out whether there’s money to be made putting together a deal to launch his own label.

Not to say Harvard Business School is typical. But our class survey showed us to be something like 70% Republican, 21% Democrat, 9% Independent — so it’s not exactly Harvard College we’re talking about here, or Berkeley, or Key West. Newt may not accept his sister for who she is, but many of his fellow Republicans and most Democrats now do.

Anyway, see In and Out. It’s a riot.

Monday: A new web address: www.ameritrade.com