I think you may have misinterpreted my joke about the “end” of Jim Crow being “progress.” I was being ironic, maybe you only read the first few sentences? I actually explicitly stated a way in which the arc of history has bent in the opposite direction of justice at the end.

I mean, continuing on that point, we could totally have a conversation about the 13th amendment and how there are more black people performing free or criminally cheap labor in American jails and prisons today than there were slaves in the entire United States in 1790...

Progress doesn’t really happen in this nation. At least not on this subject.

I mean, even your example of gay marriage is a weird one. It’s still completely legal for an employer to fire someone for being gay in most states of the union. Employment discrimination is one of the major issues that started the movement (look up California’s crusade against gay teachers). Queer marriage wasn’t a hot button topic until super recently in the movement comparatively. Prior to the 90s it was only ever really an issue that was debated within queer circles about whether or not we should conform to mainstream society’s romantic views. That entire conversation was erased and coopted by bigots in the 90s who said “well we’re not going to let any of you get married anyway.”

It seems odd to call queer marriage progress when it just wasn’t at the forefront of the minds of the people who started the movement, and the issues that actually did start the movement are still issues. I know you said previously that not every post needs to be a nuanced take, but all of this nuance that you’re missing kind of matters.

When it comes to queer rights we just never made any real national progress where we actually needed to.