Olbermann on Prop 8: Pass It On

[athelind]

This has been making the rounds tonight, and it should.

Edit: Embed fixed. Thanx, Cargo.

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Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Link?

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately MSNBC's embed system is broken, relying on iframes instead of embed, stupidly.

I had to do a little hacking to get it to embed, try this:

<embed width="425" src="http://www.onlineflvplayer.com/player.swf" flashvars="file=http://msnbc.vo.llnwd.net/e1/video/flash/n_countdown_specialcomment_081110.flv" height="339"></embed&gt;

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

If I were to make a joke-- as I usually do when something affects my emotions-- I would say that I am in favor of gay marriage because I believe gay couples should have the same opportunity to be miserable as straight couples do (except Athelind and Quelonzia).

But what I have really been feeling about this whole issue is something K.O. brought up in his talk. That as recently as my childhood it was illegal for black people and white people to marry each other in many parts of the country. That the churches I went to said it was a sin for black people and white people to marry. And that the general wisdom (which is so often an oxymoron) was that whether it was legal or not, whether it was sin or not, it shouldn't happen.

Even my own mother, at that time, was against it. "Love is love, but still Negroes and Whites shouldn't marry. Think of how the bigots in the community would torment them. Marriage is hard enough without all those troubles added."

So even good people, of good will, could find good reasons, high-minded reasons, to preserve the status quo. It's too difficult to pull off that kind of marriage. It will lead to violence. Be calm, be patient, be reasonable, move slowly and carefully, things are changing, things will be different in a year, two, twenty... you can marry then.

Good reasons, high-minded reasons, and wrong. All of them wrong.

Today we look back on those situations, those laws, and we (or at least I) wonder how good people could ever have believed in them. And the younger generation must simply conclude that these were not good people, that there were no good people back then.

What makes me crazy is that with the issue of gay marriage we are doing the same thing all over again. That the children of today's voters will damn them as bigots-- as the bigots they perhaps are, whether they know it or admit it or not-- just as the children of today damn the voters of the 1960s. And that the voters of today are blind, utterly blind, to the fact that they're playing the old game of hate and prejudice all over again.

[roninotter.livejournal.com]

I <3 Olbermann for this.
Well said sir.