Old ideas die hard - but they DO die

There's a reason it takes a generation for things to really change - enough of the old generation has to die off. This may sound harsh, but it's a reality of life. Many people cannot overcome their moral and ethical "blind spots", or willfully choose to indulge in retrograde acts to justify their petty conceits while the rest of society continues to evolve.

The signs have been building for a decade or more, but now we can say that the "Moral Majority" Reaganite crowd is toast. Law suits over women wearing tuxedos to school proms would have been unthinkable - now they're not just expected, but supported by a broad spectrum of society. Same-sex marriage? Ditto. Serious talk about arresting the Pope for crimes against humanity? And speaking of churches, who'd have thought that churches would organize a campaign to fight against public washroom discrimination on behalf of transgenders? Welcome to 2010. Like the defunct Oldsmobile advertising campaign, "it's not your grandpa's world."

A generation ago there was a thriving civil rights movement. Over the course of a decade or so, society saw a seismic shift in cultural norms. Womens liberation. Black power. Gay rights. They all had one thing in common - equality. No more could someone else tell a woman what do do with her body. No more could a state say black kids had to go to separate schools. No more could gays and lesbians be considered as perverts.

And yet, here were are, 40 years later, and the usual suspects act like the '60s never happened, except maybe for some of the cheesier music and the pickup trucks and muscle cars.

I was thinking of making one of these video spoofs, but someone already beat me to it.

Click to watch "Hitler finds out the gays are getting married".

Amanda Simpson becomes the first publicly acknowldeged transsexual to be appointed by the Obama administration.  She will be working as a senior technical advisor for the Department of Commerce; in the Bureau of Industry and Security.

Significantly, her tasks include "conducting press and media liason work for the agency."  Seems that, as public acknowledgment of transsexuals grows, more transsexuals are being moved out of the "back rooms" where they were considered "safely out of sight".

However, this is a minor appointment, not one that requires a nomination or confirmation, as can be seen from the official list of nominations and appointments from the White House web site.  So, while it is newsworthy, we still have a ways to go before we can say that transsexuals and other transgendered persons are accepted as an integral part of the government at all levels.