Can Government Make the Gay Go Away? – Tom Rossi

Or teen sex? Or recreational drug use? Or wild dancing? Or people dressing weird? Or people choosing to change religious denomination or even drop out altogether?

No. These are elements of our ever-changing culture and are not under the influence of government. They are not the fault of “liberals” nor pseudo-liberals nor fake liberals nor accused liberals who were really conservative like Bill Clinton.

Neither Presidents, Senators, Representatives, nor Supreme Court Justices have anything to do with the choices that people make, nor certainly with things like homosexuality that are evidently not choices at all.

But returning our culture to the fifties (or at least the false images of the fifties that many hold) will not happen under ANY president. Not Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, nor Rick Santorum.

But this is what social conservatives talk about – in campaign speeches, in town forums, and all over TV. I can’t imagine what makes people believe this line of horse-hockey.

I wish I had saved the web-page, but I was reading the comments (back in the middle of the Obama – McCain election silly-season in 2008) for a political piece and someone had written that America needed to return to a small-town feel with old-fashioned values or something and that McCain and Palin would return us to just that. Huh? How, exactly, would this be accomplished?

I don’t know if the majority of social conservatives have leaked out as many marbles as this person had, but this comment still served as a window into the thought patterns that have become evident through so many channels.

There are things happening in our culture that I like, and things that I could live without. But I entertain no fantasies about a president standing up and saying, “From now on, no one will talk on their cell-phone while paying for their groceries.”

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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