From the Reuters article:
Quote:
OTHER LEGAL ARRANGEMENTS
Elaborating on this theme, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said "states have a right to enter into their own legal arrangements, certainly hospital visitation rights, insurance benefits and civil unions."
|
I'd like to note how amazingly far we've come. Here we have a deep south Republican President stating that states should certainly be allowed to adopt laws giving homosexual couples the rights
of marriage, such as hospital visitation and civil unions, just so long as it's not called "marriage." Let's remember that 30 years ago an openly gay man in the south was at risk of bodily injury. Just pointing out the "glass is half full" side of things.
Now, folks, get meta with me. I think that on a macro level all social change that is good is also slow to come about. The upheavals that happen overnight tend to not last, I think. Or, more pointedly to the topic, when it comes to "opening the doors of society" up to a previously-discriminated-against group, society has to "take its time" accepting the change. Not everyone's brains can grasp new belief systems overnight, especially where prejudice is concerned.
There were 50 years of "separate but equal" treatment following Plessy v. Ferguson before Brown v. Bd. of Edu. of Topeka came along to state "separate is never equal." Were those 50 years, or at least some portion of them, as well as the ensuing civil rights movements, necessary for us as a society to have time to experience "growing pains?"
Now, surely after we the American society have experienced grappling with discrimination once in one form, it will be easier for us to do it again. However, won't some time for acceptance still be needed, even if it's a lot less time? This notion resounds when Vermont passes a civil union to open the door but rejects the notion of marriage (which they did consider) as well as it resounds when Edwards says "I don't think society is ready to accept gay
marriage."
Now, the danger in pointing out patterns of social change such as these is that conservatives
can latch on to them to make the "slippery slope" arguments. That is to say, the argument that over time we are becoming slowly morally degraded -- that today we are willing to approve a man having ungodly intercourse with another man and that this may be evidence that tomorrow we would be willing to approve even worse sins that may be considered anathema today. What next, we approve sex with animals? blood fetishes? incest? polygamy? state sanctioned orgies? You see where this can go, and I don't mean to rattle the cages of that "moral conservative" monster.
However, I like to try to identify patterns over time, and I'm wondering if this is one.