I love The Stranger. It's zany like no-one else

"While Evangelicals prepared for four hours of speechmaking today, liberal clergy were defiantly performing gay marriages in cities across the country this week, and other gay rights supporters were organizing vigils to protest the Safeco rally. An alternative newspaper in Seattle, The Stranger, has paid for a plane to fly over the stadium, streaming a banner behind that says, "The Stranger says: Get out of our ballpark, bigots." "

Seattle pi article: Christians opposing gay marriage to rally. 35,000 people from across state expected at Safeco Field

The fact that I love The Stranger, the whacked out, sex obsessed, liberal craziness that it is, is really a by-line to the fact that it's sad residents of Seattle are staging a rally like this. Though of course Seattle is far less 'tolerant' than many extrapolate from its lefty image, there seems to be more consensus and less extremism in the city than many other cities across the US. I love the fact that Seattle is seen as a liberal place, as a green and ecological place, and as a friendly place. It is in fact less of all these thing than as portrayed, but the image is something people try to live up to, something to which one can aspire. If it is seen to be acceptable to protest against people's rights in this way by the mainstream public of Seattle, something will be lost. Seattle is a divided city with the three tangents pulling against each other constantly. First there are the suburbans - those living on the outskirts of the city centre who are like anyone all around the country, getting on with their lives and being normal citizens by doing the Wal-Mart thing, watching the blockbusters and paying their car insurance. Then you have the more liberal, hippy city family types which Seattle has a surprisingly large number of, living in places like Ballard and Queen Anne Hill. They vote Gore and go to the Pacific Consumer Co-Op where overpriced by 'fair-trade' products are flogged to the wealthy well meaning. Lastly, you have the old and new money. They live across the waters of Lake Washington in Bellevue, Redmond and areas of Shoreline. They are removed from the petty goings on of the ordinary citizen, able to escape the headache whenever they please to an weekend house on one of the islands surrounding Seattle, or even further afield. There's lots of fragmentation within the city as a whole, leaving bands of wealth running through the city according to zip code, the inescapable truth of house prices.

But what keeps Seattle together, what keeps people coming back, and what makes people love the place is that whilst few acknowledge the problems, they're plastered over by a little craziness in each and every citizen. Though many may snort and laugh at some of the things the people of Seattle do, they don't condemn and don't mock. This is what is at threat, an acceptance that people are different and that people can mix and share a place to live despite this. Condemning gay marriage by residents garners no good-will, but only spreads unrest and reluctance to participate.