May 14, 2013: The temperature climbed to 95 this afternoon as the crowd on the south lawn of the Minnesota state capitol gathered to watch Governor Mark Dayton sign the legislation that makes our state the 12th in the Union to make same-sex marriages legal and give same-sex couples the same legal rights as wedded straight folks.

The south-lawn crowd, in which I was sandwiched, wasn't a bit daunted by the temperature. The mood was light, joyous, but not giddy, paying attention rather than partying-down. When Dayton recited the part of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that talks about the right to "the pursuit of happiness"—that genius phrase of Jefferson's—the applause was as genuine and energized as if the words had been written at three this afternoon.

Erin Murphy, House Majority Leader, spoke after Dayton, and then came Scott Dibble, the bill's author, who sounded the keynote. "Today is about love," he said. "That sounds so normal!"   

Of course. The normalcy of love was the theme that Richard Carlbom, campaign manager of Minnesotans United for All Families, hewed to in leading the defeat of the amendment to define marriage as exclusively heterosexual—a defeat that paved the way for today. His insistence that the freedom to love was the real point of marriage rights shifted the debate from the purely political to the region of the heart, where the callers and canvassers Carlbom employed sought common ground with folks who might have felt cold to the concept of gay rights.

Carlbom addressed the crowd too, of course, adding his testimony to love by quoting a poem by the early-twentieth-century American poet Edwin Markham: “He drew a circle that shut me out--/Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. /But love and I had the wit to win:/We drew a circle and took him in!"

Paul Thissen, Speaker of the Minnesota House, spoke to the group before Carlbom. "The pursuit of happiness is contagious," he quipped. And he wondered if the way the gay-marriage victory had come about—as a work of love about love—"might be a model for other issues in Minnesota."

Bingo.

Here at The Line, we try to be about new ideas—you know, a regional mass-transit policy, social-entrepreneurial startups, coworking spaces morphing into business incubators, public art driving community investment.

But just about the newest idea I can think of is to bring love to the political issues that divide us and frustrate us an drive us crazy.

Does it sound sappy? It so isn't. Let me tell you a story from my childhood. One afternoon when I was about eleven, my parents took me to meet some friends of theirs, a cultured, somewhat bohemian couple who lived in a rambling old house in the country. This couple had a houseguest—a man I judged to be in his sixties, well-spoken, a little shabby, a little shaky. He'd been a big-deal advertising man in New York. (In retrospect, I suspect he was sobering up from alcoholism and my parents' friends were giving him a place to recuperate.) He took an immediate liking to me, and I to him; he was one of those adults who treats 11-year-olds like grownups, without condescension, and that is the royal road to a nerdy and mildly precocious 11-year-old's heart.

For some reason—brain science may have the answer here—I remember that at a certain point in my conversation with this old ad lion, he began to justify advertising. "Jon," he said, "the essence of advertising isn't to fool you into buying something. The essence of advertising is  finding the place where you feel comfortable enough to hear what I have to say. Where is the place where you and I can come together for a moment? Advertising is about making that place. And so is," he said, "politics."

Sure, it sounds like Don Draper making one of his quiet, passionate client pitches for a floorwax campaign; the guy was pure Mad-Men-era. But in justifying hucksterism, I think the old adman struck gold.

That common ground he talked about is actually the ground of love. And love is the only ground, the only one, on which opponents are disarmed and some kind of dialogue and problem-solving can take place across lines of serious difference. The only way to meet an opponent, "draw a circle and take him in."

Carlbom's callers honored people who differed with them by acknowledging that they understood love, that they could be appealed to on the basis of love and what it means. They used love twice: as the real theme of gay rights and as the connection between caller and called.

"Tough love" is a redundancy. What love isn't tough? To find the ground of love—the zone where we and our opponents share common ground--isn't something the ego likes to do. I like to feel that I am beyond nationalism and militarism—but I have to remember that I benefit, every single day, from the strength and prestige of the United States, anchored in American military power.

It's in everything from the price of bananas to the convenient ubiquity of English. It makes me uncomfortable, and there is a lot about that power I want to change, but I am not above it, and in that there is a tiny slip of common ground with somebody who listens to as much AM talk radio as I do to NPR. I can denounce him or her one more time, or I can look for common ground. I can choose fear or love.

So I am rejoicing with the victors on this wonderful day, this big win for love, but love will only really have won if I can manage to send some love to the Saint Paul Cathedral too, where they are holding their vigil against what they see as a threat to marriage. I understand; I've chosen fear plenty of times too—but please, God, not tonight.