This week will be a big one in the world of equal rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down two rulings on the constitutionality of same sex marriage.
Also equal rights supporters across the country are staging Marriage Equality rallies including one Thursday on the banks of Orlando's Lake Eola.
Scott Maxwell E mail Recent columns Related Read Scott Maxwell's Taking Names the Blog Central Florida's Top 25 Most Powerful People Read the Political Pulse blog Topics Minority Groups Gays and Lesbians Feminism See more topicsRallies rulings protests all over the right for a person to marry the one he or she loves.
I can't help but think future generations will look back in puzzlement at such hubbubs the same way we look back at those who fought marriages of mixed races and mixed faiths.
After all it was only a couple of generations back when the same sort of alleged morality arguments were used to justify racial discrimination.
It was 1967 when the Supreme Court said that Mildred Loving a black woman and Richard Loving a white man could legally marry each other in Virginia.
Previously such an act was seen as heresy. In fact the trial judge in the case Leon Bazile claimed to have God on his side when punishing the Lovings declaring Almighty God created the races white black yellow malay and red and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
Such statements sound barbaric today. Yet we still hear similar arguments to justify discrimination against gays.
OK so we were wrong about discriminating against blacks. And before that women. But this time on gays we're supposed to think the discrimination logic is solid.
The truth is that the vast majority of Christians I know and worship alongside even those who question homosexuality aren't obsessed with denying rights to others. They're focused on their own families and lives.
They know that biblical interpretations evolve and that even those who claim to be literalists are not unless they pluck out their eyes and cut off their hands in exchange for sinful thoughts and actions.
Even the groups that rage against all things gay are a dying breed.
Just last week Exodus International abandoned its 37 year crusade of claiming it could pray away the gay saying it now realizes its entire ministry was misguided.
Exodus leader Alan Chambers of Winter Park told the Sentinel We've wanted to paint this as an 'us versus them' issue we've wanted to stand on our moral high ground and point a finger at people and we've wanted to fuss and fight over politics and legislation and Scripture and that's just not how God wants us to do this.
But there are still those waging wars of division. And many of them are indulged by the people who make the laws in this state.
Again I am not talking ancient history. Until just a few years ago Florida was the last state in America with an outright ban on gay adoption.
It wasn't lifted until Attorney General Bill McCollum's one and only expert on the alleged evils of gay parenting was exposed as a quack and caught with a gay prostitute.
Another piece of outdated legislation based on antiquated thinking gone.
Which brings us back to marriage equality.
Much like the previous arguments against equal rights for women and ethnic minorities the opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians is crumbling.
A growing number of states are pushing to allow same sex unions and marriages.
And though Republicans in both Washington D.C. and Florida have primarily led the fight against equal rights that largely unified stance is also deteriorating.
Last week Alaska's Lisa Murkowski became the third GOP senator in recent months to promote gay marriage saying her evolved position matches the party's mantra of promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government.
Plus Murkowski said few things promote family values more than allowing more adults to make a lifetime commitment to one another.
In other words Murkowski decided where she wanted to stand in the history books.
And it wasn't beside those who have been wrong on discrimination so many times before.
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