Thanksgiving break doesn’t offer much beyond turkey and frustration to those of us who prefer… Thanksgiving break doesn’t offer much beyond turkey and frustration to those of us who prefer living in Pittsburgh to our original homes. But it does offer one thing: a chance to meet up with our long lost friends. Like swallows, we return annually to our homes, our “annual nesting grounds,” if you will, for a few days of togetherness before we scatter once again.

This past Thanksgiving offered me a chance to meet up with my best friend, David, who is gay. It’s great to see him, because it happens less and less often. We laughed, we cried, we went to WaWa. I made fun of him for being gay, because we’re cool like that, and he made fun of me for being an idiot.

However, amidst the fun of seeing my best friend, it was only a matter of time before conversation turned to gay rights.

As liberal, Jewish individuals discussing this in liberal, suburban Philadelphia, we might not have been able to produce the most balanced look at the problem. Maybe we should have raided a church, abducted a minister and forced him to give us his views also. Maybe he could tell us why he thinks gay people don’t deserve equal rights.

And I am not a crackpot. Gay men and women really don’t have equal rights.

A married couple, that is to say, a heterosexual man and woman, can enjoy certain spousal job benefits. Often, spouses can get employee health-care plans for free or cheaply. They have access to insurance and day care.

There are a lot of on-the-job benefits. That may be a moot point soon anyway, because all the good jobs in this country are being methodically exported to China in exchange for little plastic toys. But that’s another column.

Gay couples also have a harder time adopting children, assuming that it is even legal for them to do so in their state. Married couples enjoy tax benefits from Uncle Sam, and are sometimes entitled to certain inheritances if someone related to one of them dies without leaving a will.

People who are openly gay cannot join the military. The insanity alone of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is enough to confuse otherwise bright people. Then again, the army used to refuse to allow black people in; it has never exactly been the most progressive institution in United States. But eventually, the military realized that the need for soldiers outweighed perceived social biases and began admitting black people. Obviously, they couldn’t try a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Aside from all this, there is the obvious fact that it would be nice to be able to marry a person you love without having to settle for a civil union. To put it another way, when a man wants something to drink, the government shouldn’t force him to settle instead for its diet equivalent.

But this is getting further from the point, which is, and which should be, my friend David. Too often we confuse the issue by talking about irrelevant things – the constitution, religion and equal rights. The conversation about gay rights must begin and must center around the gay men and women whose lives are worse off now than they should be.

It is one thing to imagine some unknown segment of society struggling to assert itself. It is quite another when you put a face on the issue – when people who might include your friends or family find themselves not treated fairly by the same government that so willingly accepts their taxes.

David and I were driving to a mall over break to get a head start on freezing our asses off standing in line at a Best Buy on Black Friday. I asked him what makes him most angry about the gay-rights argument in this country. He said that as an officer of the campus gay-rights group, he gets e-mails from right-wing Christians that say that he is abnormal and going to hell. He gets these e-mails from people he has never met.

Fortunately, there is still hope. David told me that one of his favorite things to do is draw people into gay-rights conversations, and then, right when they get to the real meat of the discussion, inform them that he is actually gay. Even if they were vehemently anti-gay rights in their conversation, it becomes harder for them to argue, knowing that they are looking at a real, live gay man.

He says that changing the country one person at a time is a slow process, but it is how it is going to get done.

Sam Morey is certain that “Full House” might have been an early attempt at a gay-rights show. E-mail him at [email protected].