More stuff you already know

However, there is, again, a point.

Marco McMillian, 34, was found dead on Wednesday near a Mississippi River levee. Police have charged 22-year-old Lawrence Reed with murder in the case. No motive has been established.

McMillian, who is both black and openly gay, was considered a viable candidate for mayor of Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town of 20-something thousand in the northwest corner of the state, mostly known for some significance in the history of the blues.

Upon hearing the news, my first reaction was - as was the reaction of at least some others - "oh please don't let this be what it looks like." Let it be a robbery gone bad, let it be some kind of if you'll pardon the expression "ordinary" tragedy, let it be something else and not the vicious hate crime that immediately springs to mind.

As I write this, it's still unknown if that hope, that bizarre hope that hopes for a murder to have been driven by this sort of base motive rather than that sort of base motive, is to be borne out. But I have to say that in the course of this, a phrase kept turning over and over in my mind:

An openly gay black man was a viable candidate for mayor in Mississippi.

An openly gay black man was a viable candidate for mayor in Mississippi.

An openly gay black man was a viable candidate for mayor in Mississippi.

We know - oh, how we know - that we still have a long, long way to go :cough: Trayvon Martin :cough: but sometimes it's good to stop for a moment to realize how far we have come.