Photo: Focus Features

The Power of Love

The power of love is so great that all it takes is an image. A snippet. A snapshot. A girl's face in a passing train, a desperate embrace in the street. Bear witness to love, even from afar, and it changes you, sets a bird free in your chest.

Filmmakers know this. And thank God for that. Because watching something as gorgeous and powerful as Annette Bening and Julianne Moore wrestle in their ocean of love onscreen in The Kids Are All Right (right) does more than make a political statement; it blasts politics to atoms. In the film, as in life, when it comes to love, the particulars are irrelevant. Recently U.S. district judge Joseph Tauro wrote, "To further divide the class of married individuals into those with spouses of the same sex and those with spouses of the opposite sex is to create a distinction without meaning."

He's right, of course. The power of love is not dependent upon anything as prosaic as gender or age. What matters is the "connection of one soul to another, the elemental magic that convinces you that you matter. That you are seen. That you are not alone. — Allison Glock-Cooper