Last week, I called Margaret and asked how her great-grandson was. She said she had seen him earlier in the week, and that he was "just adorable" (correct great-grandmother intonation is impossible in print) and seemed to be growing up happy and healthy. She said she was even a little jealous of the fathers' relationship with the boy. "When he sees me he cries and wants to go with one of the two daddies," she said.

I find it moving that someone so close to me, who in the abstract would find homosexuality wrong, even sinful, honestly reconsidered her position when it became personal. Margaret's thoughts are mostly with the child, but her thoughts about homosexuality in general have changed too. She has been convinced that these two men can serve as good parents--quite an endorsement in child-rearing, to be approved of by such an expert.

Her story came to mind last week when I was on the bus with two friends and one casually mentioned her sister and her sister-in-law. The third friend asked about a brother, but I had already caught it: "'Sister-in-law' just sounds more human than 'partner,'" she explained.

It may be hard to think in these terms--subtle, private, human. The most visible part of Gay Pride Month at Harvard was the racy, shocking posters put up in the Yard by the Bisexual Gay Lesbian Transgendered and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA), and though I think they had a point, I feel too that the piece of the BGLTSA agenda pursued in these posters was put forward at the cost of humanizing the issue--of confronting homosexuality via your sister, say, or your roommate.

And humanity is of the essence. Whether it is Margaret and her grand-son-in-law or my friend and her sister-in-law, it is our common humanity that can bring us to dialogue. Even rabid conservative Phyllis Schafly has reconsidered her positions somewhat by knowing that her son is gay; candidate Bush came away from meetings with gay Republicans last week more "educated" on the issue.

With her grandson, Margaret has looked beyond doctrine and politics to see people. In that case, her grandson and family have made tough decisions, and tried to live with the social and religious backlash they can expect and the family backlash they feared. Margaret decided to see the grandson she has always loved and to welcome his partner and child into their family. In the waning days of Gay Pride Month we should consider how we, can look at the challenges the gay rights movement faces and see the opportunities for change it creates--and how our words and actions affect people and not just issues.

Adam I. Arenson '00-'01 is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.