I’m not an expert on political change. But this article in the NYT claiming that “even as cultural acceptance of homosexuality increases across the country, the politics of gay rights remains full of crosscurrents” strikes me as insane, for two reason. First, that someone could be short-sighted enough to think that a decade of change, backlash, sometimes-acceptance, and sometimes-hidden deep animosity to LGBT communities means ‘cultural acceptance’ is stupid. And second, to believe that the politics haven’t changed is stupid.
In fact, I would suggest that the whole article is written as a process piece meant to goad the Obama administration into a public fight with the LGBT community, because it would be fun to watch for political reporters and would allow political opponents to point to (probably real) rifts in the Democratic party. It would also allow those who would prefer to rid the world of pesky gay people to continue to oppose political change without being openly accused of being homophobic.
1. What is a “process piece”?
2. I am 60. I have seen tremendous social change in my lifetime. When I attended The College of Charleston 1967-1969, the city park near the school had washrooms for Men, Women, and Colored — and those words were literally cut in stone. The chiropractor in our neighborhood had a sign for Colored Entrance. Women now outnumber men as applicants to significant law schools; and at some medical schools the measure of discrimination is that women are over-represented in pediatrics. In 1970, none of that was true. The complaint that so-called “gay rights” laws fail to pass, or are repealed, begs a question that was recently not even askable.
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NEW YORK TIMES November 28, 1920, Sunday
Section: Editorial, Page 32, 1250 words
Columbia’s Law School, that last stronghold in the university of the unterrified male, is again under siege. And not only are the women clamoring for admission, but it is rumored that there are those within the walls who are at least somewhat in sympathy with the invaders.
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When Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock entered Cornell in 1919, the ratio of women to men in university sciences was at a height it would not attain again until the mid-1970s.