OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

I'm trying to convince myself to let things be. To say "it is what it is" more often. Of course, when I do, those who want to worry about all things worldly think it a lackadaisical attitude. But it's not.

It's not a case that I just don't care, but that I've looked closely at whatever situation exists, evaluated it, and decided how I feel about it. Then I decided that it just isn't important enough to worry about. That there's nothing that voicing my opinion is going to accomplish or change.

There are times when your opinion can matter. Like with your kids (really, sometimes it does). Even the most rebellious of teenagers has absorbed a tremendous amount of their parents' attitudes. They may not come out for many years, but they're there, impressed at an early age.

Or when you vote. People who don't vote are saying they don't care whether their opinion is heard. That they don't feel strong enough about the situation to voice that opinion. And when the person who wins does things that are disapproved of, the non-voter can indignantly say, "Hey, I didn't vote for him." I like to vote. I want my opinion to count, even if it's just selecting the lesser of two evils.

But I'm finding that voicing your opinion in most cases accomplishes little. The item I wanted to say "it is what it is" about is one that I've discussed before, almost ad nauseam. So I don't want to discuss it again, just why I've decided "it is what it is."

I was watching the movie "The Big Bounce" this morning and one particular scene made me sit up and recognize a truth. And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that a lot of my worrying led nowhere. By the way, if you haven't seen the movie, and don't want to read a "spoiler" about one minor part, don't read the next paragraph.

In the movie there is a "tough" cop, you know how in the movies they make some guys act especially macho. Anyway, skip ahead to a scene where the main characters have broken into this cop's house and discover his "secret," that he's a homosexual. They're hiding behind the couch, spying on the cop and his lover.

OK, so we see gays in the movies a lot nowadays. Don't want to talk about that. OK, Hollywood always seems to be pushing the gay agenda on us nowadays. Don't want to talk about that. Do want to talk about the reaction of the main characters in the movies, what it might say about Hollywood, and the general American public.

The reaction of the main characters was one of humor. Now, this is mostly a comedy, I realize, but their reaction was especially obvious. It was sort of "look at the big tough cop, he's gay, don't need to take him serious." And it made me stop to realize that Hollywood would make a gay person look stupid and that it was his gayness that they made the reason for him looking stupid.

You see, I realized that the stereotype of the gay man is still very alive, even among those people in Hollywood. And, although a lot of people try to hide it, that stereotype of gays is very alive in the American public's mind. "Will and Grace," popular show, especially among gays. Yet that show also shows gay men in very sterotypical ways.

Maybe this is a case like blacks being allowed to use the N-word, that gays are allowed to make fun of gays in ways that even I find insulting. I don't know. Then another factor popped into my mind, one which has been niggling (no pun intended here, it is a real word I assure you) at me.

Not long ago young people would say, "that's so lame," meaning that something was pitiful, even wrong. Now they say, "that's so gay." So young people, despite their protestations that the expression has nothing to do with homosexuality, are now calling things which just don't measure up gay.

That bothers me, implies to me that perhaps the general public isn't completely over their distaste for homosexuality as we might think from reading the headlines. And it makes me realize just how complicated society and social issues are. Despite all the "advances" that might be made in one direction or another, that there's always more under the surface than you might think.

Last night on "Law and Order" the social debate (they always have one) was about defense of our country and secret proceeding in special courts. The show, for one of the first times that I can remember, ended up with the impression that some things are more important than individual freedoms. That if the society which guarantees those freedoms does not survive, neither do the freedoms.

As I rolled all this stuff up, I realized that society is always changing, the rules are always changing, that we can do some things to sway its direction of movement, but not much. Most of us are just along for the ride, most of us just watching out for number one and dependents, and what happens happens.

We can be part of the group who wants it to happen or part of the group trying to prevent it from happening. Over time things will probably sway back and forth many times. In time gays will find out that having the right to be married may not be the great thing they thought it to be. In time straight people may find out that gays are such a small part of the population that they shouldn't be accorded such a high place in our daily worries.

In time all kinds of things can happen. We never know, you know. But one thing I do know...

"It is what it is." For now.