I grew up in rural Canada during the 60s. The Civil Rights movement of that era was just a distant rumble that didn’t penetrate in the consciousness of a young boy on a farm outside of Schomberg, Ontario. I think I heard when Martin Luther King was killed, but I had no idea who he was or why that was important.
So learning about it later, I have always wondered if I had been in the thick of it, would I have been on the right side. Maybe not marching to Selma, but at least not bad mouthing the people fighting for justice and freedom. And maybe, just maybe, offering them praise, monetary support, votes and doing whatever slactivism I could muster up. I mean, it seems to obvious now which side was the right side, but would it have seemed that way then?
And so I find myself looking at the current fight that’s going on by an oppressed minority, demanding the rights that they should have had from the beginning, and I think of it as “our” civil rights campaign, even though it’s not my civil rights I’m fighting for. It’s a chance to do something, so that in ages hence, I can say “yes, I did the right thing”. And so I am. Thanks to the New York Senate for finally passing this marriage equality bill. Thanks to Messiah Lutheran Church for becoming a “Reconciled” congregation. Thanks to the many ways, small and large that we’re winning this battle. We got to keep chiseling chunks out of the stone of ignorance.