Both the Maximum Leader and Rusty Shackleford have administered slaps upside your humble(d) Smallholder’s head.

Deserved smacks.

But deserved not so much for historical ignorance but from bad writing.

For those of you who rely on the Minister of Agriculture to interpret history, let me apologize for leading you astray. I did not mean to imply that desegregation was the result of ONLY court action. LBJ’s yeoman work pushing through the Civil Rights Act was critical, as was the brilliantly persuasive non-violent protest movement (I explicitly reject Malcolm X and the “any means necessary crowd, they being analogous to the beleashed in-your-face queer crowd in their counterproductivity).

So Mike and Rusty were right and I was wrong.

My point, had I been able to make it clearly, was that court action spurred all that followed. There was not a steadily growing anti-segregation movement that had roots prior to the Civil War. Northerners might have been opposed to slavery, but the vast majority did not believe that the races were equal; Sumner and Stevens were considered to be fringe loonies by most outside their constituent bases. After the collapse of reconstruction (or as the great Dr. Hall of Longwood was wont to say, Reckon-struction) and the efforts of redeemers, Jim Crow was the established way of life. Most African-Americans in the South came to accept this; one of the biggest challenges of the voter registration drives was to convince Southern blacks to rock the vote and risk the anger of the whites. The NAACP’s efforts in the political realm were weak and unsuccessful, forcing them to turn to the courts for redress.

Actually, as I write this, I realize that I ought not to be so glum about the prospect of equality for gays. Part of the persuasive power of King’s movement was his ability to throw into sharp contrast the peaceful marchers and the hateful actions of the white segregationists. Many Americans who were sitting on the fence were compelled to choose sides, and they chose ‘em. Not so much out of love for African Americans but out of horror at the ugliness of the diehard segregationists.

Maybe Dobson, or Harrisonburg’s own demagogue Elledge, quoted in the post below, will go too far. Americans who oppose gay marriage but are willing to grant rights through civil unions were not going to challenge the radical leaders of the anti-gay-marriage crusade. The supporters of civil unions are a soft middle, unlikely to march for their cause. But maybe they will be pushed into the arms of equality advocates by the likes of Elledge.