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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (112254)	5/30/2009 12:39:10 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542011

Many things still carry a social stigma although legal. But for how long? Consider how the public's acceptance of what's in the media has changed. Or what's acceptable public attire or language. The media itself is what changes public acceptance of things by taking a behavior and putting it in a humorous context and/or arousing sympathy for the person who's being criticized for his/her behavior. The fictional characters who are breaking free of the heretofore bounds of public decency are always presented as glamorous, courageous, 'born-to-be-free' individuals. Usually their creativity is somehow being stifled by all these decency constraints, and they're always good-looking with soulful eyes. The fictional characters who are trying to maintain those public standards are presented as repressed, fearful and/or having suffered religious indoctrination. If the spokesman for this group is countering with Biblical doctrine, he or she will usually be exposed in an affair with the spouse of one of the other parishioners and thus be dispensed with as a hypocrite. The characters in this group tend to have worried, beady eyes and are seldom more than average looking. There may or may not be some kind of pseudo-intellectual argument woven into the story, possibly presented with some vague Constitutional justifications attached. It's a formula.....a powerful and successful media formula. Standards of behavior get changed, and somehow we all end up thinking change meant progress of some kind.