Civil Rights Revisited

I went to see the Seattle Men's Chorus yesterday. They were doing all Beatles music, and did a lot of retro dress along with some dance pieces that evoked the era of that time.

It's easy to forget when you come to art beyond the time it originated in how influential that time was on the piece. There was a massive cultural revolution going on with women's rights and black power. A surge of young people swaying the status quo to something new.

We are in a similar cultural revolution now, as the SMC aptly pointed out playing a recording of Kennedy:

This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents.
We cannot say to 10 percent of the population that you can't have that right; ... that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go into the streets and demonstrate. I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that.

10%. How appropriate.

This revolution is more obvious, at least here in liberal Seattle, in the backlash that the revolution is going on. This cultural revolution where same sex relationships are being seen more and more as the equivalent of heterosexual relationships is the result of subtle changes over the last twenty years.

When I was a Freshman, there was a questionnaire going around asking How Do You Know You're Straight, turning back all the questions asked of people identifying as homosexual. Being someone who has always been an avid hetrosexual, I could readily see how foolish they were to ask anyone (although I guess for folks who are a little more flexible in their sexual attractions, then the idea that it is a choice might be valid. Hmmm...).

Since the shift was more gradual, without as much of the public clashes as there were in the sixties, that is coming now in the form of the backlash that is bringing up things that changed the last time around--women's rights being stomped on in the guise of religious freedom and overt racism at the fore despite, or perhaps because, our having a President that is not 100% white.

I can't say whether it is the race of the President or the gaining acceptance of homosexuals that is the root of the nastiness that seems to be growing in too many of my fellow Americans. All I know is that the times they are achanging and there is no going back. At least, I plan on doing everything I can to ensure my rights are not diminished due to the unhappiness of those who do not believe this is one country and want a country better than what we have going on right now.

They also played other quotes, including one from Barack Obama. I cried when I heard his voice. I love my President and am so proud that my country did elect him. I did not believe it would happen, which made me sad. Now that it has, I am disappointed in all those whose negative feelings towards him are out of all proportion of his acts or person. I definitely would have had him do somethings differently (although it is the Democrats in Congress that I truly blame for bickering and not getting to work in those first 100 days), but he took on this job at a low point in American history--financial chaos, hemorrhaging jobs, totally trashed foreign relations--and he's turned things around. Without a lot of help.

We are living in interesting times. I do not understand those who preach hatred and fear in the name of Jesus Christ. While I am not a Christian, it is clear to me that those were not among his values. Barack Obama is embodying more Christian values than any of those right-wing conservatives who claim to be working for him. It was best summed up in this recent, well-circulated quote:

Obama is not a brown-skinned, anti-war, socialist who gives away health care. You're thinking of Jesus.

If only those vocal conservatives were thinking of Jesus, the world would be a much better place. Jesus was an inclusionist, except perhaps when it came to the rich and the money-lenders. He forgave. He wanted us to all get along. And if he hung out with the prostitutes, I'm sure he hung out with homosexuals. He was about love and compassion, two values I see little to none of in the right these days.

But there is hope. Things do get better over time.We cannot allow those who are pained by these changes to create pain by trying to roll them back. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.