Bloggin' like my daddy taught me

Earlier today sitting at an auto race exposed in the blazing sun my dad made some remark about video games and I defended the medium because I speak my dad's language and most video game people don't, and also because it's really satisfying to disagree with someone who's shaped your thinking and guided your intellectual growth.

I remember the first time I disagreed with my dad. Well, I may or may not remember. I remember the feeling of disagreeing with him, but the topic escapes me. However, I do remember disagreeing with him about gay marriage, and I think I'm just gonna call that the first time, since who's gonna say otherwise?

Dad said (this was a few years ago, mind) that he was getting frustrated by all the hullabaloo about gay marriage, that it wasn't the right issue for the time. Setting this aside – since I didn't take issue with it at the time – he continued to argue that the issue of marriage wasn't what the gay movement was about anyway, and that for anyone from back in the day (70s-ish I guess), the idea that gaining the right to marry would be some kind of major milestone was totally off-base. That wasn't what the whole thing was about.

"That's totally ridiculous, Dad. Most people aren't in 'Movements.' Most people are boring – they want to get a good job, find someone nice, get married, maybe have kids. Some of these people are gay. Movements are fine, whatever, but this isn't about a 'movement.'"

Bear in mind this is reconstructed and phrased in my current voice – I'm pretty sure I had different speech patterns when we had this discussion.

Dad likes to take bold stances, which I do as well and which I probably got from him. He supported the Soviet Union's communist experiment, and unlike every other semi-communist out there he doesn't immediately cave the instant you bring up Stalin, or take the coward's way out by saying "If Trotsky had won out it would have been better" or whatever intellectually-dishonest backtracks people use. In fact, the only thing he regularly criticizes the Soviets for was their treatment of art and artists – but that's just his way.

This has gotten tangential. He took a bold stance on gay marriage because bold stances surprise people and make them think. I thought, and I disagreed with him. I like disagreeing with Dad because it means I'm not a parrot, even though I by and large share his views; because he's a lot older than me and can argue much more effectively than most I've met; and because I like to surprise him and make him think.

But really Dad? "Gay movement" are you serious? Come on.