Here's a Challenge

Sorry, I wrote this yesterday. I just now realized I didn't publish the damn thing.

On my last post, someone seemed to think we (the US) might be too puritanical for the change of just accepting gays in the military (which isn't to presume how this person feels on the topic itself).

Well, that got me to thinking. When have we ever made a change where we moved in the direction of tolerance, eradicating discrimination, or expanding support or protection to a previously unprotected segment of the population where the reaction was so bad we eventually undid it?

Now, let me put some parameters in this. I'm not talking about people swallowing the benefits for undoing progress because they're not old enough to remember what it was like before, like the self-deluded railing against vaccines (perhaps because they don't remember the horrors of the diseases that have all but disappeared due to vaccines - that "all but" being critical) or those who remember the good old days when "no one needed an abortion" because they won't remember or don't know about the women maimed for life or killed with back alley illegal abortions - back when being pregnant and unmarried meant ruin. But that's not what I'm talking about here: those are proposed changes to the status quo because there's at least a whole generation that's lived with this.

No, what I'm looking for is when have the ones against these changes been demonstrably right, so right we had to step back and do something different. I mean, I'm thinking of suffrage for blacks, women, Native Americans. Laws to protect workers, medicare, medicaid, social security, child labor laws, and, yes, laws to protect gays or even allow them to marry.

Let's face it, all of these changes had doomsayers who predicted the end of life as we know it as a result. Did it happen? I don't mean some disgruntlement, usually among the same doomsayers, but real issues either similar to those predicted or ones we didn't see coming that demonstrated the change was untenable?

That's what I think. I think the problems will be limited almost entirely to the ones predicting horrors now and the fact they didn't get their way. And, with an adjustment period shorter than anyone predicts, it won't be any big deal.

Because, here's the thing, there are gays in the military now. They're serving our nation and fighting or working alongside the rest of us with *gasp* no horrible things happening to their comrades as a result. No one is bothered because their preference doesn't make any difference in the kind of soldiers they are or how they treat others. We repay their sacrifice by making them lie to the rest of us to do what they do, lie to their comrades, keep secrets in order to stay there.

I don't see how that makes any sense. Just sayin'.

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