Who’s next? – Ranting Rex

I was watching a documentary today on Gloria Steinem. I was shocked that as late as the 1970s, there were men-only lunch counters, and they actually sectioned off restaurants to prevent women from eating with men. Then I remembered only ten years earlier, in the 1960s, black people couldn’t even enter some eateries. I thought how lucky we were to have grown out of such crazy ideas. Then I remembered…we haven’t.

How we treat people we don’t like hasn’t changed at all, the only thing that seems to change are the people. In the 1960s and 70s, racial minorities and women were barred from owning real estate, having certain jobs, and in some cases getting medical care. This type of treatment hasn’t stopped. However it doesn’t happen to women, or minorities so much. It happens to homosexuals.

The same inequities we were inflicting on women and minorities so many decades ago, we’re now inflicting on homosexuals. And we’re using the same tools to do it. The arguments are entirely the same. “This is harming our children. The country is in a tailspin. Why don’t these people just stay home.” My favorite of all, however, “It’s stated in the Bible…”

The Bible seems to be the tool that all conservatives fall to in an effort to subjugate an entire group. For homosexuals specifically, I have always been amused at the effort of people to use a couple of phrases in Leviticus as proof that homosexuality is somehow going to bring down the wrath of God. Of course I’m also amused that these are the same types of people who think fluoride in the water is a communist plot. I don’t think wielding the Bible in an effort to hate, was its intended use. However, since that’s been the most common use to the book throughout history, I might be wrong on that point.

My neighbor and I had a discussion many years ago about homosexuality and the church. He is a retired Marine Chaplain, and a very good and caring man. He told me that as a lifestyle, homosexuality was considered evil by the Bible. I reminded him that “planting two different crops side by side is also considered evil. They’re doing a lot of that in Iowa. What we should do about them?” I’m still waiting for an answer.

I can tell you with pretty good certainty that women and minorities haven’t changed over the years. Evolutionarily speaking, they are the same as they were ten thousand years ago. They are definitely no different than they were four or five decades ago. So what changed? What changed to make them greater participants in our society? What changed were attitudes. Perspectives changed. Nothing changed, but what we as a society decided to deem as real. And our society is all the better for it. I have faith that the same will happen with this next group of disenfranchised people.

When I think about it, I find it fascinating that forty years from now someone will be sitting in their living room, and writing about how we treated homosexuals in our society, and how our attitudes changed. They will write about how even with all the horror scenarios, none of them came to fruition. They will talk about the marches, the sit-ins, the name calling, the beatings, and even the killings. And they will talk about that with all that, our society is stronger today, than it was yesterday. The idea of that warms my heart. Then I wonder: Who’s next?

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