If gay weddings aren't legalised, I will feel the same anger and shame that I felt when Bush was re-elected
Along with prizes for everyone and a determined lack of embarrassment that the mascot for an all-girls institution was a beaver, educational documentaries were a mainstay of my schooling in New York City. These documentaries were particularly favoured when we had reached those eternally popular subjects for history students, of school age and beyond: slavery and the Holocaust. They always featured the same ingredients: black-and-white news clips of American people and politicians voicing opinions that were par for the course in the day ("Negros should never own property", "You can't trust a Jew", etc), included to make us, cosseted liberal schoolchildren that we were, gasp. Be grateful you were born now, and not in the unenlightened past, these documentaries cooed. Right?
But in 2011 America, it all too often feels like we are living in a history class documentary. One day, footage of American politicians – from George W Bush to Michele Bachmann – proudly stating their abhorrence of gay marriage as though bigotry was a qualification for political office will sound as shocking as Richard Nixon grouching that "Jews are disloyal", as retro as the sexual harassment of secretaries in smoky meeting rooms in Mad Men. But that day, it hardly needs stating, is not yet here.
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Complete article at Guardian : http://bit.ly/mRWGpz
