Victim Mentality

Josh Marshall has the right of this:

Over the last few days, as the emerging national marriage equality consensus has become more clear, a number of social conservatives have begun suggesting they are now in a new and oppressive climate in which they’re no longer able to speak their minds about the immorality of homosexuality or why laws should discriminate against gays.

Or, to put it more bluntly, they say they’re losing their right to calls gays gross and weird.

Every single 19th century counter-attack by the right against the modern, 21st century left is based along these lines.  "Reverse discrimination" is nothing new, but today's conservatives use it constantly.  The war on women's reproductive rights is really the war on lost white men, robbed of their right to bully others, and emasculated by having to perform duties that should "traditionally belong" to women.  The antagonism towards African-Americans is to try to balance the scales because obviously racist black voters go 95%+ for black Democrats like Obama.  Hatred for Latinos is all about them taking jobs from good white men and bringing crime along with them.  Always white men are the victims.

At a certain point during the civil rights struggle it ceased to be acceptable in mainstream political rhetoric to say that the government should privilege whites over blacks. It basically happened between 1965 and 1970. That obviously didn’t end the issue of race or racial discrimination or widespread racism. But, in public, it displaced it onto a different set of questions and policies, a different kind of rhetoric. Pity party notwithstanding, the folks who oppose full equality for LGBT Americans seem to realize that we’re on the cusp of a similar transition.

And all of this is happening in the space of a few short years.  It is overwhelming, but that's just because of all the pressure built up behind the dam when it broke, and now the forces of privilege are drowning in it.  We're all going to have to learn to get along eventually, but now we can at least start.

[UPDATE] And speaking of victim mentality, behold the screaming from our Christian brethren over today's Google Doodle celebrating March 31 as Cesar Chavez's birthday.  It's persecution of the Christian majority, I tell you!