Top Ten Things We'd Like to See Disappear in 2009

(Is this really that scary?)
.
10. Prop 8
The fact that a proposition passed to deny civil rights to a group of Americans at the exact same moment that centuries of discrimination against another group of Americans was being erased will go down in history as one of the greatest ironies in the history of our nation. And the fact that the proposition was voted for in large numbers by one of those groups of people against the other group of people is also strange and very sad, to say the least.
.
How does something like Prop 8 pass in this day and age? It's pretty simple. Despite huge gains in the education of our populace over the past one hundred years, we are sadly reminded that ignorance is still a mighty and powerful force in our society. In other words, the people who voted for Prop 8 don't even see the issue as one of civil rights, because they still believe that being gay is a sin, it's evil, it's something one chooses, it's something that one can control, it's something one can turn off or on. This is one of those things that people will look back on in a few years and wonder how a majority of Americans could be so stupid, just as the way we shake our heads now at the Southern governors who stood in the schoolhouse doorways to keep Black students from integrating the public schools.
.
But that's the story of social progress. It's easy to look back in history and ridicule the ignorance of the past, but for some reason, the people who are just as misguided today don't recognize their own lack of understanding of an event in real time while it's actually taking place. It always takes several years for those people to wake up and realize they were wrong. In college, my government class invited Orval Faubus, the Arkansas governor who forbade the Little Rock Nine from attending Central High School, to speak about those days. Everyone else in the class pussyfooted around the issue, until finally I just asked him why he did it. The look on his face told it all. As he looked at me, his face had a weariness to it, a deep sadness; you could tell this man had spent many long years regretting his actions of those days and regretting the shameful place in history in which his actions had landed him forever. He mumbled something about the fact that you just had to understand those days and that time, but he didn't have to say a word. His face told it all.
.
And one day, the supporters of Prop 8 will feel the same way.