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November 06, 1999
The sexuality of the emerging millennial generation
Forget about gay rights. The oldsters can fight out those battles. As far as the next generation is concerned, in the words of Kurt Cobain, "What can I say, everyone is gay." Gay rights and abortion rights and other battles of the sixties and seventies are over as far as this generation is concerned. It's only the leaders on both sides who don't get it.
In many ways, the views of the new generation are nothing less than the 1970s’ ideals come to fruition. Derailed by a conservative backlash coinciding with the emergence of AIDS, the ideals of pure social liberalism dropped off the radar during the 80s. But they never went away. They just went underground; in schools and on campuses, in grunge, goth and club cultures, kids continued to “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Only in the last few years have they found expression in the pop obsession with alternative.
Take a look at Governor Jesse Ventura. Here is a man who believes in legalization of drugs and prostitution and admits freely to plenty of both in his past. Admits? He likes telling the stories. Unlike other politicians, he does not do so with the qualifier that it was youthful indiscretion. He only adds that he did so in ways and at times in his life that he was not hurting another person. In this respect, Jesse Ventura embodies the social libertarian code: live responsibly, but if you are not harming anyone else, then what you do is your own decision.
Of course, no social phenomenon happens in a vacuum. Other factors have opened the door. The general public's fatigue after a decade of partisan saturation bombing over political scandals has taken personal behavior off the front burner in evaluating politicians. The internet and other technologies make it harder if not impossible to control expression, leading to wider availability of alternative views than ever before. The rise of the global economy, aided again by the internet, threatens concepts like the nation state and interstate commerce, with its ability to impose moral as well as economic laws on its people. This confluence of factors has opened the door the millennial generation was already pounding on.
What can we expect? Expect gay rights and pro-choice battles to go away as the religious right is fully revealed to represent only five to ten percent of the populace and these issues are widely accepted with little fanfare. Drugs carry much more social baggage and have less knee-jerk support from the Left, but the trend will be towards more acceptance. More communities will chip away at drug laws, starting with marijuana, legalizing medical use and decriminalizing possession, then legalizing possession and so on. And beyond the rights battles, expect sexual variety to become the norm in public discourse. In entertainment, alternative lifestyles will be shown not for infrequent titillation value, but for a different perspective on life – just as today people don’t think watching The Sopranos is limited to members of the Mafia or Sex & the City to rich uptown Manhattan women. In life, it will take a generation or two, but gender roles will break free from the boxes they were put into by the rigid thinking of scared Christian men – revealing not two or four options, but a continuum.
© 2004 Philip F. Rose
Posted by experiential at November 6, 1999 08:00 PM