SO DAMN NORMAL

Dear Spike:

Just months after Utah became a state in 1896, the U.S. Army announced its intention to station a regiment of black soldiers at Ft. Douglas in Salt Lake City.

Sen. Frank Cannon pleaded with the federal government to send the so-called Buffalo Soldiers somewhere else. And the newspaper I work for shamefully backed Cannon's argument, warning among other things that that the black soldiers couldn't be trusted to keep their hands to themselves on the city's trolly cars.

But the Army held its ground, and in the spring of that year, the first soldiers of the 24th Infantry began arriving at the fort up on the hill, just a few blocks to the east of the plot of land where our home would be built, 10 years later.

About two years later, the soldiers of the 24th joined Teddy Roosevelt in his famous charge up San Juan Hill. They returned to Utah as heroes — marching down Main Street to the thankful, heartfelt cheers of thousands of Salt Lake City residents.

The next year, the regiment was reassigned to the Philappines. Again, the people of Utah turned out to cheer the unit as it paraded down Main Street one last time. For most, it was the last time they would ever see that many black men in one place.

Sometimes I wonder what this state would be like if the Buffalo Soldiers had stayed — if only just a little bit longer. If they had, would it have taken 80 more years for the Mormon church to lift the ban on blacks in its priesthood? If they had, would David Martin and Theodore Fields have been gunned down on Aug. 20, 1980 for having the audacity to commit the offense of jogging at the park with two white female friends, less than a stone's throw from our home?

I don't know the answer to that question.

I was thinking about the Buffalo Soldiers today after sharing a coffee with my friend, Becky, who was agonizing over the impending fate of the California Supreme Court's recent ruling, legalizing marriage for homosexuals. Becky, who is engaged to marry her partner later this year, was fretting over new legal challenges to the court's decision — and wondering "when people will realize that we're just so damn normal."

I don't know the answer to that question.

But something tells me that by the time you're my age, you'll be looking back on the marriage bans of the early 21st Century the same way I look back on that disgusting newspaper editorial from the late 19th Century.

And while there's likely to be plenty of whooping and hollering and flag-waving and drum-banging between now and then, I don't believe that's what's going to change the world. Rather, just as the Buffalo Soldiers did in Salt Lake City more than 100 years ago, people like my friend Becky are opening closed minds — convincing people that they are, in fact, "so damn normal" — simply by being so damn normal.

How long will it take?

I don't know the answer to that question.

But I think you will.

Love,
dad