Charles Pierce:
However, after some 40 years of vigorous advocacy, there is something
like an equal power to push back against faith-based bigotry. As a
resident of Massachusetts, where we've had legalized gay marriage since
2004, I can say with certainty that the resistance to that idea is
pretty much doomed demographically. In 50 years, our grandchildren are
going to wonder what all the fuss was about. Equality for our fellow
citizens who happen to be gay has a cultural and social momentum behind
it that can now, in certain specific instances like this one, be more
than a match for people who believe the way Brown does, as he has
learned to his own disadvantage over the past month.
In the past 10 years, we have seen the barriers to marriage equality
fall. In the past year, we have seen the bar to gay people serving
openly in the United States Armed Forces fall. (Pretty soon, at one of
our bizarrely militarized major sporting events, we may have four gay
pilots doing the flyby.) Sports were supposed to be the last real
redoubt, and you can feel the ground shaking there, too. I do not
believe that any action should be taken against Ron Brown based on what
he says and what he believes. That's not what we should be doing to
people in this country. But somebody should take him aside and explain
to him that the world is changing around him and that, for everyone's
sake, it's time for him to adjust or get out of the way. Nobody is
asking him to abandon his faith. They're just asking him to grow within
it, to take the essential message of love that is the heart of the
Gospels and to apply it generally, as all Christians are called to do,
and without any legalistic nonsense about "loving the sinner but hating
the sin." If he's going to loosely toss around the name of Pontius
Pilate, he should go back to his Bible and remember that Pilate was
forced to provide a secular execution to appease the local religious
authorities. "I find no basis for a charge against him," Pilate said,
and then sent Jesus to Calvary anyway. There are lessons that Ron Brown
needs to learn.
The times, they are a changing. They won't wait for folks who are uncomfortable with change.
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