Gay marriage declared legal across the US in historic supreme court ruling

[Jackson]

Amazing news.

[Buzzer]

Nothing changed here after WW2...

I can think of one important way that isn't true. World War II permanently dispelled the notion that there was work "only men could do." That may have been subtle, and it may have taken decades to proliferate in the workforce and in common thought, but it certainly was a huge part of creating the society we have today compared to what we had in 1940.

Formal academic discreditation of biological racism which had underlined a lot of domestic U.S. policy would be another. Hitler openly borrowed many ideas from the U.S., and wrote admiringly of the reservation system and the efficient way that the U.S. had dealt with its "undesirable minority problem." Eugenics didn't start in Germany. It started with pseudoscientific cranial measurements and attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of intelligence in the U.S. by researchers here. It was exported to Europe.

You have to remember who the people in the US are. The ships coming to America weren't full of Europe's elite and most enlightened.

True of virtually all phases of immigration (other than the very very first wave of immigration from a society about to face something like war or civil war, where those with the means and the finances to get out early and bypass wait lists do so), an important point when people get into the rhetoric about how "today's immigrants" are this lesser stock than what we used to receive in the past, which is invariably untrue.

Religious Freedom wasn't what the first people came here to establish. Massachusetts Puritans used to prosecute and hang Rhode Island Quakers when they crossed the colonial borders.

Very true. The Puritans had been wrangling since at least the mid-1500's to try to establish, in England, a national Puritan ideology which would "treat Catholics in the same way that Catholics had treated protestants," including attempts to bring back public burnings.

It's so funny when I hear people from France, Germany or the UK belittling the US for the treatment of the Native Americans once "we" arrived... Had Rome not done the same thing to all three + other nations in Europe you'd all still be worshipping trees and rocks and sacrificing virgins under the winter solstice. <(made yup example but you get the point)

If I understand you correctly, I think I do know (and often agree) with where you're coming from, in the sense that for far too long it's been a position of convenience for Europe to sit back and criticize the U.S. and its silly, backwards racial divides. When you see how Europe as a whole is reacting to substantial immigrant populations of a truly different ethnic and religious and cultural background than "garden variety Europeans", you see that this wide tolerance and enlightenment on diversity which Europe often vaunted itself to have over the U.S. was, in many ways, an untested conceit.

However I feel the need to be absolutely clear and say one can never look back on atrocity and justify it by indirect, unintended "benefits" we can incidentally assign to what happened after the fact. No one goes out and kills and pillages people "to improve their quality of life." Most of the conquerors in history didn't even pretend that was the motivation. It's only ever something said "looking back."

[Virge]

@ Buzzer ............ you are 100% right about women from WW2... and it's funny that was a good unintended consequence instead of a "movement."

Eugenics started from Charles Darwin's cousin... and spread here through... wait for the drum roll....... the progressives... the same people who took the prohibtion movement from a few hundred old spinsters and turned it into a nightmare in social engineering constutional amendment that should have gotten them all executed for being a bigger danger to a peaceful society than alcohol ever was anywhere in history.

And racism is a universal problem and it's danged sure not worse in the US than most nations. It just shows up different ways, some way worse and some real subtle.... With Jay being half Polynesian I experienced several times in Australia with people slurring him first and then me for being an American... or a "sepo" their version of N****r for Americans... from "septic tank"... "full of shit"

[WhatsInAName]

Congratulations my colonial brothers

I have found myself laughing somewhat at the number of homophobes threatening to leave the US for Canada, clearly they're ignorant of the fact that gay marriage has been legal in Canada for 10 years.

[trywait]

Congratulations my colonial brothers

I have found myself laughing somewhat at the number of homophobes threatening to leave the US for Canada, clearly they're ignorant of the fact that gay marriage has been legal in Canada for 10 years.

#irony !