Sunday, March 15, 2009

'"Culture wars" over? I fear Frank Rich is wrong'

From Open Salon here.

I spent the entire Bush years pissed off. Too many forces were at work seeking to deprive me, and the people I love, of basic civil rights. I read Frank Rich this morning, a columnist for whom I have enormous respect, and I respectfully disagree with him.

Rich believes the "culture" wars are over. Funny how the culture wars look a lot like issues of the body, of feminism, of civil rights extended to those who are not the white, heterosexual norm upon which the Constitution was originally based.

I almost felt dismissed by Rich this morning. He inspired me so often during the Bush years, and today, I wanted to take heart from his assertion that now that the economy is so bad, nary a peep will be heard from those who poured so much energy into denying gays their rights, who passed laws to make it damn near impossible to get an abortion, who opposed embryonic stem-cell research because they claimed it would lead to a harvesting of embryos. Gosh. If I could live in that world, where it's all over and my side won, I'd be happy. . . .

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