Craig writes:

> I'm concerned that a great deal of opinion and speculation and accusation
>  have been generated on this topic, with very little thought as to what the
>  true facts of the matter are.

As odd as it may seem, I don't think the specific facts associated with the
purported incident at HP are all that particularly relevant to what I see as
the truly significant value of this discussion. Rather, the real value of
this thread lies in everyone coming to understand one another's point of
view, and in that, again underscoring the value of the internet.

I feel the same about this discussion as I did with the initial discussions
of evolution here. I was floored (and truly surprised) by the reactions that
occurred with that first discussion. Everyone I've known and associated with
for the last 30 years neither questions the reality nor the pervasiveness of
the phenomenon of evolution; it pervades every aspect of their daily lives
and the evidence of its reality is only perhaps surpassed by the notion that
gravity exists as a similarly real phenomenon.

Clearly there is more parochialism and intellectual isolationism in the
United States than I think any of my university associates would ever tend to
believe, and most disappointingly, that parochialism exists in very bright
and intelligent adults. Quite obviously, large groups of people are simply
not talking to one another. Or are talking past one another. Or are only
talking to those who reinforce their specific preconceptions.

But the second point to be made is that for all of the passion of this
discussion, the viewpoints expressed here are very likely to be highly
ephemeral. While the word of God may be eternal, human interpretations of
that word tend to sometimes change quite radically and quite quickly.

If the internet were in existence 60, 70, 80 or 90 years ago, a topic that
would have generated much, much greater passions than the social acceptance
of homosexuality would have been miscegenation -- and I suspect that you may
not even now know what the word means.

Morals and mores have changed to the point now that I had to rack my brains
for several hours this afternoon to even remember the term. You can't look up
a word as to its correct spelling if it only represents a dull, gray area in
your memory that you can't quite get a hold of. Nonetheless, miscegenation
was at one time on everyone's thoughts and was a crime more socially severe
than sodomy, more obvious, and more severely condemned in a significant
portion of the United States. In fact, six states made it a state crime by
banning its practice in their state constitutions.

Miscegenation was the synthetic Latin word used to condemn interracial
marriages (literally, "mixed races"), most especially for that horror of
horrors, a marriage between a Caucasian and anyone of any other race. This
basic prejudice persisted for at least 300 years in English and American law,
and by the 1900's was supported not only by any number of often-quoted
Biblical passages, but even worse, by a very large number of scientists,
politicians and intellectuals. Indeed, the anti-miscegenation movement among
the intellectually and politcally powerful class in America and Europe set up
the Eugenics (meaning literally, "well born") Movement that gave Hilter's
race-cleansing philosophy legitimacy.

For a very brief history of the Eugenics Movement, see:

     http://vector.cshl.org/html/eugenics/essay7text.html

You can still find hundreds of web pages repeating this material, but now
from only a Biblical perspective, and these materials are so highly
marginalized that even the most devout student of the religion on this list
would find the ideas abhorrent and unsupportable. A single example is:

     http://www.clrc.net/race.html

(It's important to note that the phrase "Aryan" has now been replaced with
the term "Nordish" in most of these web pages).

But these pages wouldn't have been considered unreasonable a mere 60 years
ago. Rather, they too would have been seen as a right and proper
interpretation of God's word. It was the tenor of the times.

World War II was the instrument of change for all of this. So many servicemen
came home with Asian war brides that people simply had to change their minds.
But that change didn't occur overnight by any means. James Michener, the
author, then news correspondent, also married a Japanese girl, and he wrote
often later in his life about the fact that the law was such that if he and
his wife stayed at a hotel virtually anywhere in the South, they were very
likely to be arrested for the crime of miscegenation.

But now, the idea that such behavior would be considered a severe moral crime
seems both shocking and unbelievable. Clearly, fundamental shifts in what is
considered moral and what is not are possible. The era following WWII was a
time of great social upheaval. After the catastrophe of WWII, people simply
weren't going to tolerate the pre-war patterns of fear and bigotry any
longer, and the Asian war brides played such a massive part of that change
that many historians now credit their relatively easy acceptance into
American society -- despite the laws that prohibited their marriages -- to be
one of the primary catalysts for the civil rights movment that began just a
few years later with Rosa Parks. People similarly, simultaneously rebelled
against the ingrained anti-Semitism that pervaded American society prior to
the war, especially in most American business enterprises.

Things can change very rapidly, often within a single lifetime. No speaker is
more honored or more sought after than Colin Powell is now, but he is quite
fond of reminding people that as a young man, he wouldn't have been allowed
to walk through the front door of the same hotels he now speaks in. Once a
larger percentage of the American population understands the fragile nature
of gender determination -- and that increase in understanding is inevitable
because of the rise of genetic technology -- the current attitudes will seem
as prosaic 50 years from now as does the "crime" of miscegenation.

Wirt Atmar