I don't buy into these pessimistic conclusions. Yes, the Religious Right tired for many decades to Talibanize Americna society, with some success, but ultimately they lost that campaign. Chuck0
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Yes and no. I don't want to make too big a point of it. On some levels there appears to be a kind of loosely negotiated arrangement between various social and legal institutions and the public at large of a don't ask, don't tell policy of enforcement on a whole spectrum of cultural and social issues. But I don't consider selective non-enforcement much of a victory. These kinds of informalities always carry the implicit threat of arbitrary reversal. And that arbitrary and informal quality alone acts as a repressive system.
And there is another matter, a more or less aesthetic complaint, less obvious, less materially demonstrable. I think of it as a form of inane ugliness that has settled in place of what should be a freedom to simply be. It always takes a battle, some politically obnoxious edge, fighting some indefinite moral bound that habitually constricts the spirit. There is just not quite enough air to breath, not quite enough room to move, not quite enough finesse to give expression its full measure.
I'll give you an extremely trivial example. I signed up for a figure drawing class for the live models and did some great drawings---at least for me. End of the semester, came time to put up a selection from the class in the small library at Vista, a local city college. Well, guess the rest of the story. No dicks allowed. It never occurred to me---I had forgotten this sort of prudery so long ago I couldn't remember when that had been an issue---maybe close to forty years ago? Something like that. I was dumbfounded. I started to object, willing to make a fight of it, but the instructor shook her head. Forget it Chuck. We don't need a fight, the art classes are barely supported as it is...
Chuck Grimes