It's been interesting watching how the views on homosexuality have changed over the past decade.
I still remember when presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama went to Saddleback Church for a political debate hosted and moderated by Rick Warren. Ten years later, that sentence sounds absolutely bizarre, like something from another dimension. Nobody would imagine such a thing now. But weirder still, ten years later, is the answer that Obama gave on same-sex marriage. “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman… I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage.”
Wha??
Ok, so this post really isn't about homosexuality. I'm not trying to sucker anybody into a debate on that. Scout's honor or whatever. But, I do think this provides a good insight into how the political left and right have changed.
At the time, most liberals tended to agree that a) if homosexuality it your thing, then more power to you, and b) that's really none of the government's business. Live and let live. You do you.
This stood juxtaposed to what was commonly referred to as the evangelical right. That is, the conservative moral majority who had historically advocated for laws based on Judaeo-Christian values (think anti-sodomy, prayer in school, etc). The general premise was that good morality made for a good country, so we should govern accordingly.
This is why liberals used the word liberals. They identified as the people for liberty.
Not so now.
Today, these positions are almost completely reversed. We are no longer looking at the evangelical right and the liberal left, but the evangelical left and the liberal right.
Let's go back to the homosexuality thing.
The current position of the Democratic party at large is that if you do not personally approve of the lifestyle choices made by ______ (LGBTQRS123etc person), you are a terrible human being who should probably be arrested for hate speech.
Now, for most conservatives, the view on homosexuality has not changed. Most still think it's a sub-optimal lifestyle, and most Christian conservatives still regard it as a sin. But what has changed is the view on how that relates to the law: It's none of the government's business. Live and let live. You do you. Maybe I disagree with you on moral grounds, but you shouldn't have to conform to my moral standards.
This is the current political landscape in a nutshell.
And I think the term "evangelical left" sums it up perfectly. (kudos to Michael Malice, I believe, in coining it)
Just as the aim of the evangelical right was the impose their morality on society, so now does the evangelical left. And just as the evangelical right did so out a religious zeal, so now does the evangelical left. The only difference is the religions (Christianity vs Generally Spiritual Neo-Marxist Hedonism (or something like that)).
The "right" is now an interesting group, encompassing virtually anything not in the top-left corner of the political compass. We've got centrists, libertarians, anarchists, classical liberals, and traditional conservatives all rallying under one banner.
"Rallying" may be the wrong term. Meandering around, perhaps. Poking each other, to be sure. But still united, oddly, against what we perceive as a common adversary: The evangelical left.
Welcome to the future.
It's a weird place.
Have a Tide Pod.