What's Blue & Doesn't Fit?
You'd think conservatives would get tired of being on the wrong side of things. They're always trying to prevent social change and they're always wrong. They've opposed most major items of social change for decades, and when the change finally comes about, everyone agrees that "Yeah, okay we probably should have done this all along." No one's ever like "Damn, we fucked up giving people more freedom." Outside of abortion, once people stop dragging their feet about an item of social policy, everyone accepts it and moves on. No one rational wants to go back to before women had the vote or to segregation, but at the time conservatives insisted that's how things HAD to be. But people got their freedom and life goes on just swimmingly.
That's why I don't understand people being against gay rights. I'm perplexed that people can't draw a parallel to every single other oppressed minority in the history of our county and extrapolate it. Gays will eventually get their rights and 20 years later no one will understand why it took so long. People will feel just like we do looking back on the '60s, unable to get why people were just fine with mistreating a certain group simply because they were different.
I used to wonder why gays were being so pushy about it, thinking they should just bide their time until people were ready to accept them. And why can't they be happy with civil unions? Why do they have to have marriage? Then I realized that people said the exact same thing about blacks in the civil rights era. I remembered that people almost NEVER willingly give up power and if you wait for someone to give you freedom and equality that you will be waiting a very, very long time.
So I'm very bothered to see all these states throwing up roadblocks to equality for gays. Esp. seeing how many of them are backed by organized religion. Shit like that is what makes me hate organized religion. It furthers my belief that organized religion is just a mob with better PR. The federal government needs to remove any and all benefits for marriage, everything from health insurance to tax breaks, until anyone that wants to can get married.
Speaking of health insurance, universal health care is another thing that's going to happen and then our kids are going to be totally blown away that it wasn't always like that. The thing I hate the most about the health care debate is all the scary thing opponents say will happen already exist in the current system. Rationing? It exists already. Unless you're stupidly rich, there's only a set amount of health care you can afford, even with insurance. Some faceless bureaucrat deciding what care you can get? Yup, that's already the case. Only now he works for the insurance company, instead of the government. Personally, I'd rather have a neutral clerk doing the job than someone whose whole job is to save the insurance company as much money as possible. Long lines for non-life threatening conditions? Every time I've gone to the hospital with someone else (I haven't been to the hospital for myself in...sheesh, over 10 years. knock on wood.), we've had to sit and wait for hours and hours.
I think americans just refuse to admit that maybe we're not the best in the world at everything. Maybe every once in a while other people come up with a good idea.