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2062 in American Issues
Inspired by comments in This Post About Brave in Scans Daily.
Think of the cultural changes in the United States of America over the last 50 years. What would people back then think of our President? Of gay marriage in six states and the District of Columbia and with three more likely in the next year? A Jew on the Democratic Party ticket exciting virtually no comment in 2000? I do not say this in a spirit of self-congratulation, there are many social problems in America. My reason to point this out is to set up my projecting into the future to the year 2062.
I think by that date every state shall have gay marriage and will have had it for a long time. GLBT issues will still cause comment, much as racism is hardly a dead issue today, but it would be conceivable that a gay person could be elected president by that date (though unlikely). Likewise I think that great progress will have been made in feminism and the portrayals of ethnic and sexual minorities in the media.
I do not positively assert that it will happen, but if Disney were to make an animated movie about a prince who fell in love with another man it would not stun me. It would be unlikely due to the economics of smaller potential audience, but I think by then many people will identify more with story than particulars of sexual orientation just as today a majority of white people are happy to identify with black characters, though there is still quite a bit of racism in casting and a significant minority cannot/will not. What is a great deal more likely is that a children's movie with feature an openly GBLT supporting character. This character will probably be of the neutered sort, but that is fairly standard for all children's lit characters.
Politically I think that we may end up looking back on the gay groups supporting the Republicans and be calling them pioneers, for all that gay people hate them now. Not that I like their positions, but groups do have to embrace leaders who are not on their side in order to get progress at times. The Democratic Party did not exactly embrace gays with open loving arms back the the days of Harvey Milk, after all. And I think they would be happier and get more progress if they either went liberal like I did or focused more on supporting gay friendly Republicans rather than supporting the Republican party as a whole. But that is not my fight.
I also think that atheism/agnosticism/freethinking (Is that another grouping that needs an acronym or would freethinking serve as an wide label?) will have passed the inflection point where it is commonly accepted much as it is in Europe as a whole. There will still be states and places where it is less accepted and religious affiliation will still be an advantage when running for political office, but its lack will no longer be an insurmountable hobble
I think that abortion will continue to be a major issue with periodic outbreaks of strident argument about one procedure or another, push it back four weeks, push it forward, et cetera.
I also think that marijuana will be legalized at a national level in the next 50 years looking at the polling numbers. Majority support is there for it right now, but it probably will not happen very soon since it still is not a vast majority and there would need to be some sort of crystallizing moment. The present economic crises could have been one if the support for legalization had turned up earlier or the two parties were not so far apart from agreement on anything. It will probably take the form of legalizing "medical" usage at first while not requiring any state to have medical marijuana laws.
I am not sure that Muslims will be much more accepted than they are today. It is likely to still be a very small minority in America. I am not sure what sort of laws will be left for us to argue about rights and emancipation by then. Perhaps we will be arguing about if we should have laws forbidding religious displays in school much like the French do today, aimed at whoever the religious bugaboo of the day is.
In all I believe in a future that is not hugely better or hugely worse. Just different.
Think of the cultural changes in the United States of America over the last 50 years. What would people back then think of our President? Of gay marriage in six states and the District of Columbia and with three more likely in the next year? A Jew on the Democratic Party ticket exciting virtually no comment in 2000? I do not say this in a spirit of self-congratulation, there are many social problems in America. My reason to point this out is to set up my projecting into the future to the year 2062.
I think by that date every state shall have gay marriage and will have had it for a long time. GLBT issues will still cause comment, much as racism is hardly a dead issue today, but it would be conceivable that a gay person could be elected president by that date (though unlikely). Likewise I think that great progress will have been made in feminism and the portrayals of ethnic and sexual minorities in the media.
I do not positively assert that it will happen, but if Disney were to make an animated movie about a prince who fell in love with another man it would not stun me. It would be unlikely due to the economics of smaller potential audience, but I think by then many people will identify more with story than particulars of sexual orientation just as today a majority of white people are happy to identify with black characters, though there is still quite a bit of racism in casting and a significant minority cannot/will not. What is a great deal more likely is that a children's movie with feature an openly GBLT supporting character. This character will probably be of the neutered sort, but that is fairly standard for all children's lit characters.
Politically I think that we may end up looking back on the gay groups supporting the Republicans and be calling them pioneers, for all that gay people hate them now. Not that I like their positions, but groups do have to embrace leaders who are not on their side in order to get progress at times. The Democratic Party did not exactly embrace gays with open loving arms back the the days of Harvey Milk, after all. And I think they would be happier and get more progress if they either went liberal like I did or focused more on supporting gay friendly Republicans rather than supporting the Republican party as a whole. But that is not my fight.
I also think that atheism/agnosticism/freethinking (Is that another grouping that needs an acronym or would freethinking serve as an wide label?) will have passed the inflection point where it is commonly accepted much as it is in Europe as a whole. There will still be states and places where it is less accepted and religious affiliation will still be an advantage when running for political office, but its lack will no longer be an insurmountable hobble
I think that abortion will continue to be a major issue with periodic outbreaks of strident argument about one procedure or another, push it back four weeks, push it forward, et cetera.
I also think that marijuana will be legalized at a national level in the next 50 years looking at the polling numbers. Majority support is there for it right now, but it probably will not happen very soon since it still is not a vast majority and there would need to be some sort of crystallizing moment. The present economic crises could have been one if the support for legalization had turned up earlier or the two parties were not so far apart from agreement on anything. It will probably take the form of legalizing "medical" usage at first while not requiring any state to have medical marijuana laws.
I am not sure that Muslims will be much more accepted than they are today. It is likely to still be a very small minority in America. I am not sure what sort of laws will be left for us to argue about rights and emancipation by then. Perhaps we will be arguing about if we should have laws forbidding religious displays in school much like the French do today, aimed at whoever the religious bugaboo of the day is.
In all I believe in a future that is not hugely better or hugely worse. Just different.