People like her

This long and painful march toward full equality, it seems to me, boils down to something quite simple – normalcy. For all the fighting and chanting and rallying and protesting, what we really want at the end of the day is to be seen as normal. We are, after all, just like everyone else. We pay taxes, we have families, we fall in love, we fall out of love, we vote, we go to the dentist, we buy groceries, we argue about what to watch on TV. There is just this little business of what kind of genital we prefer that differs. Minor, really.

Whenever we’re treated outside the gay community as just that, normal, I feel we’ve accomplished our goal. So, when I picked up People magazine to read the feature on Rachel Maddow and her partner Susan Mikula, I almost felt like screaming “Victory!” How incredibly normal, how delightfully mundane was the feature on them? Look, they have a cute house – just like you! Look, they do the dishes together – just like you! Look, they eat Cream of Wheat – just like you!

The short piece (read the full scans here) has none of the “What’s it like to be gay?” drama that sometimes accompanies such mainstream features. It’s not an issue, just a fact. Other interesting facts? Rachel works 60 hours a week (I bet it’s really more than that). They live in a 275-foot Manhattan apartment during the week (How do you shoehorn that much smart into that small a space?). And Rachel says they way the two met while she was doing yard work for Susan was “very ‘Desperate Housewives.’” (Sample pick-up line: You want me to trim your bush? Groan. Sorry, had to).

So thanks, People, for making us love Rachel even more and realizing – besides her abnormally big brain – how so very normal she actually is. Also thanks for making every gay gal on the planet frantically take to Google to find Rachel’s adorable ringer T.