do you hear that? it’s the end of the world
by Joshua Lustig
Published: May 30, 2008
American moral values are collapsing around us. The entire world is crumbling as we know it.
The best part? No one cares.
At least that’s the message some far-right groups are sending about the recent court rulings dealing with gay rights. Listening to the political hate speech, you’d think America itself was rotting from the inside out. This time, however, is gloriously different than previous election cycles because no one is listening to the antics.
If gays getting the right to marry in California or “don’t ask don’t tell” being partially struck down is truly going to end our civilization, no one seems to care much. Two monumentally important cases that should have activists, pundits and politicians alike brewing with opinions have largely been accepted… and, well, ignored.
The fact that our country is finally focused on real issues might mean that landmark civil rights cases like these may become more prevalent. This is good for the gay community and is good for America. Finally, we won’t be distracted by election-year wedge issues.
The fact is that most politicians don’t actually care about banning gay marriage. They use it because, along with abortion, it is one of the only issues where Americans truly disagree. But right now especially, it serves only as a distraction to the real issues facing America.
Regardless of your morals, the simple fact is that an amendment to the United States Constitution stands a zero percent chance of ever being passed. While individual states can certainly limit (or expand) the rights of their homosexual citizens, there will never be a concerted effort to do it at the federal level. It is a political issue and in past years astute politicians on both sides have used it to galvanize their bases, nothing more.
America, congratulations. You have finally proven that this kind of non-issue bantering is not important to you anymore.
Even the specter of Nazism, such a useful tool to getting protracted media exposure to radical causes, seems to have failed here. I’ll let the latest proclamation from the website for the far-right Campaign for Children and Families sum up their strategy for you:
“Ask your county clerk if they were a Nazi officer during WWII and had been ordered to gas the Jews, would they? At the Nuremberg trials, they would have been convicted of murder for following this immoral order… Likewise, the ruling to destroy the man-woman definition of marriage should not be obeyed.”
So, American judges are the new Gestapo? Schwarzenegger the new Hitler? Yawn.
Four years ago, this kind of hate speech would have been plastered across the political world as traditional media looked for insight into the mysterious psyche of the seemingly all-powerful Bible Belt Christians. It was naïve then to swarm the loud radical fringes for clarity. Fortunately, today, in a much wiser society, this absurd statement was practically ignored, and not only because the media realized this kind of story stereotypes their right-leaning viewers, but also because we as a society have grown up.
Focusing on real issues is good for gays, good for the left and yes, even for conservative Americans. Regardless of how you feel about homosexuality, we can all agree that in a time of economic hardships, two wars and a truly dysfunctional government, gays getting the right to marry in a liberal state is not the battle we should be focusing on.
California’s decision was huge, yet we haven’t seen near the concerted effort of past years to demonize it. The fallout was minor. Not even a week later, the decision to adjust “don’t ask, don’t tell” was practically ignored by all media outlets. This non-attention is truly a watershed moment for America.
Let’s close our mouths and keep it that way.
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