Never Been A Better Time

While I dig out from under a pile of work over the next few days let me recommend you run, not walk, to read Mark Morford’s latest. Here’s a little taste:

The citizens of all bygone eras would like you to know: There has never been a better time to be gay, lesbian, black, a sexually awake female, independent minded, free thinking, kinky, weird, unique, artsy, progressive, open minded, curious, a little feral, a lot sly and winking and ready for what’s next.

Conversely, there has never been a worse time to be uptight, clenched, fearful of change and gay rights and alternative thinking, hating on all the kinds of progress that are right now doing nothing but accelerating and mutating so fast no one can really keep track anymore.

And the remarkable news is, this basic equation? It never really changes. Conservatives resist flow. Progressives embrace it. Nevertheless, flow happens.

So maybe this is the most important question: Are you feeling wildly blessed? Are you amazed and astonished at the times in which you get to live, fraught and wobbly though they may be? I’ll be the first to admit, it’s not always easy. It often seems like nothing, in the grand scheme, ever changes. Violence and oppression, war and ignorance, the Catholic church like a bitter, stooped old man, spitting at the young and the joyful? Same as it ever was.

But then again, not really. Progress, after all, is rarely comfortable, or fun, or painless, or all that easy to clearly track. It usually happens in feverish fits and bloody lurches. It happens by legislative fiat and in spite of fundamentalist howlings, backlashes, vile little pastors from North Carolina calling for all gays and lesbians to be put behind electrified fences until they die.

But oh, it still happens. It always does. This is the wonderful thing.

It does sometimes feel like we’re having the same conversations about the same stuff with the same tired old parties taking their same tired old positions. Little wonder God watches from a distance, we bored him with our petty bullshit centuries ago. And yet, progress still happens. The blade of grass still pokes through cracks in the concrete sidewalk.

Anyway, I don’t mean to be sappy, but read the column, it’s a good one.