It Gets Better
May. 19th, 2023 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supergeeThe Religious Right wants to have same-sex marriage, abortion, consensual sodomy, and other such abominations overturned by an unelected activist Supreme Court. I’m opposed, but I have to admit that’s how we got those goodies in the first place.
But there has been actual moral progress. All of those are now favored by the majority, which they weren’t before. To take another example that was widely seen as the Court meddling at the time, I know many people (me for instance) who are not fond of Clarence & Ginni, but I don’t know anyone who wants to throw them in jail *for being married to each other*. Resisting the constraints on individual sex, dope, and expression was always much of the Good Parts of libertarianism, and now to a great extent I don’t have to be one anymore because we won those.
I wonder if there is similar progress in pop culture. Star Trek had deep intellectual and personal content like its text ancestors but laughably crude special effects. Star Wars did precisely the opposite and flourished. SF (which one reads) was supplanted by sci-fi (which one watches). But both franchises have survived and now Trek may be triumphing by being interested in its people.
But there has been actual moral progress. All of those are now favored by the majority, which they weren’t before. To take another example that was widely seen as the Court meddling at the time, I know many people (me for instance) who are not fond of Clarence & Ginni, but I don’t know anyone who wants to throw them in jail *for being married to each other*. Resisting the constraints on individual sex, dope, and expression was always much of the Good Parts of libertarianism, and now to a great extent I don’t have to be one anymore because we won those.
I wonder if there is similar progress in pop culture. Star Trek had deep intellectual and personal content like its text ancestors but laughably crude special effects. Star Wars did precisely the opposite and flourished. SF (which one reads) was supplanted by sci-fi (which one watches). But both franchises have survived and now Trek may be triumphing by being interested in its people.
