In My Lifetime

When I was a child in school, we learned about significant inventions of the industrial age that changed the world.

Things like the steam engine, the automobile, the airplane, radio and television, the cotton gin, the light-bulb, the telephone, the telegraph, the mechanical reaper, photography, motion pictures, the gatling gun …all of these important inventions that changed people’s lives.

We were led to believe, at least the way I was taught, that nothing important was happening in our own lifetimes – that everything that needed to be invented had already been thought of or was on a drawing board somewhere.

Of course, that isn’t true. Human beings are always inventing. Why just in the past 50 years we have seen such marvelous wonders as the Microwave Oven, the Jet Airliner, the L.E.D., satellites, smoke detectors, cell-phones, the MRI, GPS, DNA fingerprinting, lasers, car seat-belts, optical discs, kevlar, and of course, who can forget that all-important life changing invention – Viagra!

But, along with the changes in technology, we humans are also evolving as social beings.

When the United States of America was created in 1776, not many people gave much thought to the fact that some humans owned other humans and used them to perform hard labor. Not many people gave much thought to the fact that women could not vote, and in most cases could not own property.

If you look at how the USA has expanded to cover the 50 states, you are also looking at hundreds of millions of acres of land that was stolen from the original inhabitants, the Native Americans. The “Indian Wars” of the 1800’s slaughtered these people so that we could have their land.

For a time, in the United States of America, it was perfectly legal to not rent your house to someone because they were Irish, or Jewish, Italian or African-American.

When I was a child, I vividly remember restrooms and water fountains being marked with signs “colored only”. I remember a separate waiting room at the greyhound bus station for “colored.”  I recall that the colored people in our area had their own part of town, their own schools, their own churches, and no one thought it was peculiar.

Much of our belief around how people were treated were justified by some passage of scripture in the Bible. That’s how we always make ourselves comfortable with mistreating others. We point to the Bible, and we say that because we can twist the meaning of a set of words from that book, we are allowed to treat other human beings badly. That we are better than someone else because we can find biblical support.

Recently, the United Methodist Church reaffirmed the idea that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings, while at the same time they were formally apologizing for their support of segregation and oppression of native people in the past. How hypocritical can we be?

I’m not so much against religion or a belief in God as I am against the fact that we use a book of mysterious origin, which has been documented over and over as having been mistranslated, with major portions left out,  as the basis of how we treat other human beings. We might as well use the book Alice in Wonderland, it’s probably just as accurate.

Paul Raushenbush over at the Huffington Post has published an opinion piece called LGBT Rights — Getting On The Right Side of History.  He opines that eventually, LGBT people will achieve full and absolute equality. Just as women have, and black people have, and Irish immigrants have, and that the powers that be, some decades after we are given full equality, will spend some amount of time and energy apologizing for their long years of oppression.

I’m sure that should our great-great-great-grandfathers suddenly return to life, they would be utterly shocked that we don’t all have a negro working for us in the kitchen, and they would be mortified to see women wearing pants, holding down a job, and standing at the voting booth. These social changes would amaze them just as much as a light-bulb or a cell-phone.

Several reliable surveys now show that over half-the country supports marriage for gay people. If you talk to 50 young people, you’ll find that nearly all 50 of them will tell you that prejudicial treatment of an entire class of people simply because of who they choose to love is silly and needs to stop.

Change Is A-Coming. Change is always a-coming. Why do we continue to let moldy old-men behind pulpits scare us into resisting what we know in our hearts is right? Why do we continue to tolerate politicians in our government who are too stubborn to cross the aisle and negotiate with each other?

It’s not just about marriage. It’s about full equality across the entire spectrum of personal freedom and rights, and yes, responsibility. Recently, we finally began to allow homosexuals the honor of serving in our military, without having to lie about themselves. That doesn’t mean that we now have homosexuals in the military – we have always had homosexuals in the military. Now they don’t have to hide the fact that their loved one at home happens to be the same-sex.

Change Is A-Coming for Gay and Lesbian people. I just wonder if it will be in my lifetime.