From the Great Minds of Bloggers

I'm pulling this post from a thread below. Thank you Bill for your wonderful comments! Incredibly insightful and well-spoken! It speaks to the heart of the current issues and troubles. We must continue to speak out...

I wonder how history will view this period of American politics. This ruse of making gays the boogeymen, the whipping boys, for the moral ills and the transmogrification of traditional American family values into the decadent excesses and moral ambiguities of 2006. Frightening this must be to those over 60. But even more frightening to those who so fear change, so hold dear the security of their status and the comfort of their family and the esteem of their position in society – to see all around them, wretched moral decay. Oh, politicians are clever and this generation has produced some of the cleverest. And in Machiavellian style they have looked for a scapegoat – not unlike how other minorities have been scapegoat in the past – we all know about those.

Whether there are witches to burn, or heretics to torture, or Jews to incinerate – or homosexual perverts to bash. Whip up frenzy, diatribes of ignorance, even exhort from your pulpits to exorcise the demons. Bring down the queers and their liberal weak nelly girly men supporters – for we are Americans, strong men brave and proud, and our women folk obedient and dutiful.

Nature seems to require that history repeat itself.

State after state has heard the call – rise up and defend your families, your youth, from the queer hoards that are at your borders. Carve deep into your most sacred texts, that no queer is to be tolerated, no sexual deviant quartered, no homo pervert to be comfortable in your midst. Roll back if necessary the very foundations of equality and permit the shadow of dark beliefs, from chapel and church, to take the helm of state and guide our nation through these waters.

And from heaven’s rim must Copernicus and Newton, Darwin and Galileo, even Socrates and Plato sadly shake their heads at how past lessons learned are lost. And how an extreme authoritarian right can, in the name of all that is good and holy, cause such pain, such anguish such inequity.

The hallmarks through time are glaringly similar – hypocrisy thy name is zealous conservatism. Lie enough and the ignorant masses believe, even you will begin to swallow your own lies. Oh how arrogant it is to have beliefs of one forced on another – for beliefs are just that, imaginings without fact. And when fact is dismissed out of hand, then one begins to have insight into principle motivations – power. Power and more power. Power for survival – to insure security of self and family. Power commands respect.

And the Republican Party has cleverly taken attention away from their naked power grab by turning such a powerful spotlight on the sexual bogeyman hiding in everyone’s ignorance.

And state after state is brought into this unholy alliance such that an overwhelming tyrannical majority is at the gates of the very Constitution – determined to craft hysteria into solid and everlasting law. In the name of good and God.

Oh how far have we as a people drifted, not just from God’s message but also from democracy’s message. How far from the idea that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was preeminent. That love and tolerance hold the majestic heights. That reason, common sense, humility, and individual accountability supercede myth, ignorance, superstition.

Odd, one might think this wouldn’t happen at a time when America’s stated position around the world is liberty and equality and recognition of minority rights. We fight that Iraqi women can vote, that Afghan girls can go to school. We demand that China give it’s population free and unfettered access to truthful information.

Yet – at home – we legislate and mandate the second-class status of millions of Americans who, through no action or fault of their own, happen to be of a different sexual orientation. We object, as a nation, to the beheading of homosexuals in Muslim countries – but can not see our own type of intolerance here.

Realizations have swept the world over and over through time, fighting against ignorance and those whose vested interests are at risk. But fact and reality eventually win out. As it is now in much of Europe – who as distant parents have come to realize essential truths not yet accepted by an arrogant and upstart progeny.

Timing is everything – and without the match, that spark of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that ignited this bonfire – perhaps this whole ugly episode would have been avoided, as the generations next in line are far more knowledgeable, accepting, progressive, and unfrightened of homosexuals. That generation may well have even expanded gay rights in conformity with The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and in line with the thinking of much of the western world. And certainly in line with scientific and medical opinion.

And it may end up as an historical irony that the religious right’s ascendancy on this issue may be both short lived and followed by a backlash, that for some time will brand such power grabs from the right as exactly what they are. The Inquisition had their moment. Osama had his moment. The Nazis had their moment. And far right extremist religious conservatives in American may surely have theirs. But there is always a price to pay and history will record that as well.