The Party of Humpty

Amanda over at Mouse Words has a post up in which she wonders:

Can anyone explain to me how people who are against gay marriage now are so damn sure they would have been just dandy with interracial marriage had they lived 70 years ago? Do the people who adamantly oppose feminists striving for wage equality and other women’s rights really think that they would have been pro-suffrage in the day? Do those against affirmative action or pretty much anything the NAACP supports really think they would have been marching in Birmingham? If they’re full of shit, who do they think they’re fooling?

She solicited comments, which I tried, but Blogger comments sucks ass and wouldn’t let me post.

This problem she mentions is the very thing which makes me want to vomit every time Republicans refer to themselves as the Party of Lincoln, while consistently opposing every piece of civil rights legislation which comes down the pike. Unfortunately for those of us who are not bigots, these sorts of perceptual shifts are the work of generations. Conservatives can embrace past changes precisely because they are in the past, what they are chronically incapable of doing is adjusting their current perceptions, no matter how in conflict with reality they may be.

I’d honestly like to hear from anyone who believes that Strom Thurmond embraced integration and racial equality at any point during his lifetime; publicly he had to bow to political reality, I’m speaking of his personal convictions. Modern conservatives accept (at least on the surface) something like interracial marriage because it has been acceptable for most or all of their lifetimes, while gay marriage has not. Fear not though, a hundred years after gay marriage becomes acceptable across the board Republicans will probably refer to themselves as the Party of Judy Garland.