Green Oasis

It seems that many of us are upset at the majority of California voters harshing the collective buzz over the Obama victory.

Today is bittersweet… Obama got elected but it looks as though Proposition 8 will pass, banning gay marriage in California. Fuck you, California. (kottke.org)

While I am disappointed, I have reason to hope. Many people are celebrating the election of the first U.S. president of African descent (and I believe the right president) and find it unbelievable that we’ve come so far in so short a time. The days of segregation and poll taxes are part of living memory.

Like them, I look back to the attitudes that surrounded me when I was a child. I remember when it was unthinkable that a person would be openly homosexual. It was an aberration, a perversion, a disease. Being openly gay was to relegate yourself to the fringes of society. I am not that old; that wasn’t so long ago. I am deeply heartened that only a slim majority of California voters hold on to their apprehensions that recognizing the innate rights of homosexual people will somehow lead to the downfall of civilization, that somehow the gayness will infect them. We’ve come a long way.

Yet we still have some maturing to do. We are not yet comfortable in giving full expression to the American ideals of equality, life, liberty, and justice for all. We’re still easing ourselves into the pool of liberal democracy. Someday, I hope we can leave the security of the shallows and strike out for open waters.

Bill Moyers gave an inspirational speech on the need for a truly free press in order to preserve American democracy and how it’s currently failing.

Remember the Muhammad comics from Denmark that got some Muslims in an uproar? Here they are just in case you haven’t seen them yet because newspapers in the U.S. don’t want to take the heat (I don’t really blame them).

Jyllands-Posten (the newpaper that originally published the comics) reports that “all of [Denmark's] major dailies decided to re-print it on Wednesday after it was discovered that Muslim extremists had plotted to assassinate the man who drew it, Kurt Westergaard.”

We have a conflict of ideas: the idea that a person’s religious sensibilities must be respected under penalty of violence versus the idea that we must all be free to say what we want within very liberal bounds. Tolerance of opposing viewpoints in a liberal democracy must find its limit when people plot murder, yet the freedom of conscience of innocent Muslims must be respected. Religious extremism like this might be the poison pill that kills democracy if we can’t strike a proper balance in response.

Having said that, the whole point of this post was just for me to stick up for freedom of speech in my little way.

(via Jesus and Mo)