The New Bigots

For centuries, literally, American bigots have argued that the slavery of blacks in this country was not only legal but also morally correct. They often used passages of the Bible to back it up. Many if not most American citizens were sympathetic to this line of thinking until the civil rights movement of the sixties managed, through much blood, sweat and tears, to create a paradigm shift.
With the images of southern police clubbing and hosing peaceful marchers showing up live on our TVs, it became harder and harder to justify racial inequities. The Ku Klux Klan, dressed in silly outfits standing in front of burning crosses didn’t help the bigot’s image either. It became unacceptable in most of our society to use certain derogatory language and historical assumptions concerning a whole race of people.
This re-evaluation of historically acceptable attitudes about African-Americans began to spill over to include other people of color, other ethnicities, and other beliefs. And people of the old way of thinking were, in most circles, criticized and even shunned for their crude and hateful attitudes.
There are many similarities to the sea change around cigarette smoking. Bogart and James Dean and others were considered very cool in the forties and fifties to have a cigarette dangling from their lips. Now, only a few decades later, it’s considered very tacky, if not offensive.
Now consider the self-righteous defenders of “traditional marriage” holding the very same Bible over their heads and proclaiming the moral correctness of persecuting yet another group of our citizens: gays and lesbians. Apparently it is imperative for some people to always have another group to hold down.
Why is it that the most hate filled people you meet in this world are always the followers of a man than professed love and forgiveness for his fellow man?
So, we have the New Bigots. Same as the old ones. They’ve just picked a different group to trash. And I guarantee you that in twenty years, when we look back on this period, they will be seen as pathetic hate-mongers, remnants of a backwards time. The only problem is, there will undoubtedly be another horrible little hate group to replace them railing against fat people or skateboarders or sunbathers. And they in turn will be the New Bigots.