Robert E. Lee and the Great State of Indiana Take it in the Chops, 150 Years Apart

GELFAND’S WORLD-David Letterman and I have something in common. We both lived in Indiana at one point. What we also have in common is that this week, neither of us feels particularly proud about having lived as a Hoosier, what with the state taking the national lead in gay bashing. 

The firestorm of protest that ensued has been of historic proportions. It's even gone far enough that the state is talking about working up a legislative fix. But in the meantime, Letterman did a Top Ten list attacking Indiana's governor, and organizations as diverse as NASCAR and Apple have protested. 

It turns out that there is a historical anniversary that reveals a parallel. It's what happened in the American Civil War 150 years ago this very week. Lee's army was surrounded, mere day's from surrender, and lost a critical attempt to break out and away from the surrounding enemy. The Confederates were the right wing of that time, defined by their need to separate humanity into those who could and couldn't be discriminated against. 

True, the Indiana law getting all the attention is not at the level of slavery. Under the new law, you can be turned away from an establishment for being a different kind of person, but you cannot be forced to remain in that establishment and work their fields without pay or freedom. So at least we have come that far. 

In both stories, Lee's last stand and Indiana's attempt at gay bashing, the core lesson involved recognizing a fact that had been growing for some time. The Confederates had been on the ropes for quite a while by the end of March, 1865, and the acceptance of same sex marriage has been growing in the United States. 

As Indiana and Arkansas have been finding out this week, times change, and they got caught in one of those changes. At the risk of using a term that is usually used trivially, I will point out that there is a paradigm shift going on here. Even one presidency ago, the idea of gay equality was considered a liberal goal with an uncertain future. Now it is becoming a fact. We might recall that it was as recently as 1970 that football in the SEC was almost entirely segregated. Change does happen, and sometimes acceptance takes a while. 

Indiana, as in so many other things, is half a century behind much of the rest of the country. I'm not Hoosier-bashing here, I'm just repeating what I heard from other Indiana residents when I lived there. Much of the Hoosier state is still caught up in a 1950s view of American culture. This is not the case in the state's two or three great university enclaves or in its major cities, but the simple bigotry when you get a little downstate can be shocking to the city-bred visitor. I know this from personal experience and from stories told me by westerners who studied at some of Indiana's more prestigious academic centers. That story about the SAE Fraternity at Oklahoma, and the racial attitude it represented, was not limited to Oklahoma. 

The reaction to Indiana's law is indicative of two major trends that have only recently been coming to fruition. 

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The first of these trends involves the willingness of the mainstream and of corporate leaders to speak out against discrimination. Put it this way -- NASCAR isn't usually viewed as a leftist shop. When groups such as the NCAA and Apple are on the same side, you know something is happening. We might contrast the current situation to the America of sixty years ago, when it was considered downright radical to speak out against racial discrimination or against segregation. The reversal of that cultural norm has been a major victory for American civilization.

The other trend is the willingness of the liberal side of America to fight back. It became demonstrable a few years back, after Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke when she attempted to speak in favor of reproductive rights to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Limbaugh called Fluke by unflattering terms in his radio show, and this seemed to be the final straw for a lot of people who had resented Limbaugh's political influence. The anti-Rush movement increased rapidly, wrote letters and emails to sponsors, and began to have a significant effect. Today, Limbaugh is no longer carried on KFI radio here in Los Angeles, and his presence nationwide has been substantially diluted. 

The Indiana affair is another chapter in this newfound willingness to fight back against the right wing side of the culture war. It's of particular significance that the resistance has been nationwide, and that this resistance is being led by those with real power. Threatening to pull a major convention or future athletic event carries a real threat. This goes well beyond the fairly anemic consumer boycotts that spring up every now and then, typically coming from the right wing side of the culture war.

 

(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])  

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 28

Pub: Apr 3, 2015