“'It's Pretty Embarrassing How Long You Guys Took To Legalize Gay Marriage'”

Late-21st century high school students say they can't believe "backward" Americans still treated gay couples as second-class citizens in the 2010s.

The Onion is truly a national (if not global) treasure, and pieces like this one on the future perspective on today’s fight for marriage equality represent exactly why:

DECATUR, IL, THE YEAR 2083—According to students in Mr. Bernard's fourth-period U.S. history class, it's "really pathetic" how long it took for early-21st-century Americans to finally legalize gay marriage.

The classroom of 15-year-olds at MacArthur High School—all of whom were born in the late 2060s and grew up never questioning the obvious fact that homosexual couples deserve the right to get married—were reportedly "amazed" to learn in their Modern U.S. History: 2081 Edition textbooks that as late as the 2020s, gays and lesbians actually had to fight for the constitutional right to wed.

"Wow, that is nuts," said student Jeremy Golliver, who claimed he knew gay rights was a struggle "like, a hundred years ago" but didn't realize it lasted so long. "It's really embarrassing, when you think about it. Just the fact that people in this century were actually saying things like, 'No, gays should not be allowed to marry,' and were getting all up in arms about it, as if homosexuals weren't full citizens or something. It's insane."

"I mean, was everybody just a huge bigot back then or what?" Golliver added.

[…]

"If they thought it was the right thing to do, why didn't President Clinton or Obama or whoever just say, 'Hey, discriminating against gay people is wrong, so let's let them get married'?" said Pete Merriam, 15, who was born in an age with no death penalty and with nationwide approval of a woman's right to choose. "I get that they wanted to be reelected or whatever, but come on. That is so stupid."

"And look, our textbooks say civil rights legislation was passed in the 1960s, but then it somehow took another three generations to legalize gay marriage?" added classmate Jennifer Goldberg, laughing. "How does that even make sense? Oh my God, and those civil union things were ridiculous, too. Just let gay people get married already!"

If the actual future is even half such a veritable liberal wet-dream, I’ll die a happy man. It’s no mystery that future generations will look back upon opponents of gay marriage and other forms of LGBT equality in much the same way we modern folks view segregation and preventing women from voting. It’s the exact same thing, just as it always is, and ideologues that now fight against social progress will only find themselves frantically denying their involvement in such bigotry in due time, just as conservatives now desperately deny being the ones who originally supported institutionalized racism and sexism, despite an overabundance of historical evidence demonstrating otherwise.

I just honestly don’t comprehend how honest and rational people can possibly adhere to conservative values, which have been proven quite exhaustively to accomplish nothing but hold society back out of irrational fears of change. The current battles for gay rights is just the latest manifestation of this inherent incompatibility between liberalism and conservatism – ie. progress vs. regression.