Transforming, For the Good

 THIRTY YEARS AGO about ten percent of the American people favored legalizing gay marriage. Today, more than seventy percent approve of its being legal since 2015. fifty years ago, gay people were essentially forced into hiding to avoid being persecuted, prosecuted, incarcerated, or worse. Today, millions of gay people openly, freely acknowledge their sexual orientation, unafraid of any consequences. Never before or since in America, nor probably anywhere else has society so fundamentally and rapidly changed its attitude about an issue of such primary importance. It proves that it can happen. american is a pluralistic culture of undervalued, neglected, even despised minority demographic groups.African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Muslims, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, transgender people, women, native Americans,  you name it,take your pick. Only young and middle aged white Christian men are entirely satisfactory, it often seems. A nation founded upon the lofty principles of social and legal equality,  from its beginning torn assunder by mutual intolerance and hatred. As President Clinton astutely said: "We do so much us versus them in this country that we run the risk of us and themming ourselves to death". Much of what we so nobly claim to believe in is aspirational. the good new is that sustained scholarship and research clearly indicates that, slow though it may be, we have made much progress and are continuing to make progress towards achieving our aspirations of human decency and equality. anyone of a certain age is aware that over the past half century, great progress has been made not only in the treatment of homosexuals in America, but also of non whites, particularly African-Americans.Advanced sociological research, using math based statistical methods, has quantified the progress made in achieving human equality in American over the past two centuries, and extrapolating future progress from past rates of improvement, has determined that racial equality for all will be achieved in about another one hundred years, and that equal levels of respect for such groups as the elderly and the disabled will gain parity with mainstream white demographic in about the same amount of time, one hundred years, another century of hare won progress. but that doesn't means that anything is inevitable. Human social progress can be retarded, or even reversed. but it can also be accelerated, as it so obviously has been with the gay and lesbian community. We can always hope for and anticipate, and bring about, the best case scenario.