Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Thanking women's liberation

Ari Ezra Waldman uses Obama's speech at Barnard College (which is women only) to talk about how gains by women for women has helped the cause for gay equality.

Back in 1916 Margaret Sanger opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn. At the time if you weren't a physician you couldn't talk about birth control because being contrary to public morals was an obscenity. Yes, a free speech issue in which the oppressors worked to maintain public order. Full and open discussion of birth control wasn't possible until 1965 when it was ruled that the state had no business in a married couple's bedroom. That right to privacy was extended to the unmarried in 1972.

Waldman says that the ability of gays to talk about their lives without being shut down for being obscene is something for which we should thank women's liberation.

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