Let them eat crumpets!

Via Sarah's Pinterest.

David F. Brooks, back from his Thanksgiving vacation, solves the gay wedding cake conundrum ("How Not to Advance Gay Marriage"):

the neighborly approach would be to say: “Fine, we won’t compel you to do something you believe violates your sacred principles. But we would like to hire you to bake other cakes for us. We would like to invite you into our home for dinner and bake with you, so you can see our marital love, and so we can understand your values. You still may not agree with us, after all this, but at least we’ll understand each other better and we can live more fully in our community.”

That "bake with you" is so precious! You build these relationships by emphasizing the things you have in common, you see, not the things that divide you, and as Brooks knows all gay men make these fantastic muffins and scones, and their ambition is to run a bed-and-breakfast in a charming New England town. With quilts. They'd disarm the baker with their respect for his technical expertise and artistry, and he'd quickly come to understand we're all the same under the skin. Better yet make it brunch, lubricated with Bellinis!

It's just like the way Oliver Brown invited the Topeka school board over for barbecue and gospel music, back in 1951 (in Brookstopia, not on our own sad planet), and they educated each other; Oliver teaching the board members about how his daughter was a human being as deserving of a good school as their own children were, and the board members teaching him about their deep religious belief in the separation of the races and their anxieties about cultural and economic change. It didn't get the Topeka schools integrated, but it was so warming and civilized, and made them feel so good about themselves, and they didn't have to bring a bunch of lawyers into it!

More, with bonus Frederick Douglass quote (he's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more!), from Drifty.