Somebody started an essay on the nineteenth-century Spanish writer Mariano Jose de Larra as follows:
The only acceptable definition of marriage is that of a union between one man and one woman. Today’s mass media, however, try to convince us otherwise. In his “El casarse pronto y mal” we see how a marriage between Augusto and Elena fails because neither is ready for its responsibilities.
As you can probably guess, Larra, who killed himself in 1837, was not even aware of the concept of gay marriage. Today’s mass media were completely alien to his experience as well. The student simply couldn’t resist the burning desire to plant these pearls of wisdom into his essay with no connection to what went after them.
Believe it or not, this is actually a good sign. Students come to college with a lot of really bizarre conditioning. Then, they start discovering the beauty and the richness of the world and, at first, it scares them a lot. They try to resist the realization that their parochial brainwashing makes no sense and this is when snippets of these weird ideas start bursting out of them. The snippets are the last line of defense against reality. Their appearance is a sign that the students are almost cured and are ready to become integrated into the world.
Clarissa's Blog 
I hope you’re right. I sure do feel like I left a sinking ship when I see the rightwingers I used to care about flailing about in this ridiculous fashion.
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I sometimes get very depressed by these behaviors so I like your optimism! But I am actually quite hopeful on the topic of gay marriage. It’s essentially a non issue to anyone under 40. And it’s certainly a non issue to anyone under 25.
But I am still worried when it comes to women’s reproductive rights and the younger generation. While support for gay marriage has grown tremendously, support for abortion has held study or even gone down. I don’t know what it is that terrifies people so much about the prospect of women having control over their own reproductive systems.
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“But I am still worried when it comes to women’s reproductive rights and the younger generation. While support for gay marriage has grown tremendously, support for abortion has held study or even gone down.”
– We’ll get there. The anti-feminist backlash in this country has been too strong, so it will take a while to dig our way from under it. It takes work but it’s doable. It makes me very proud that I single-handedly 🙂 changed the minds of 3 people on this issue. All men. I’m a lot less productive with women on this issue.
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I understand the need to insert talking points into everything, but surely he could do it such a way as to be less of an absolute non sequitur to everything else in the essay,
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This was an incredibly weird piece of writing. It was like the student couldn’t start writing before getting some homophobia off his chest.
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Going to university is such an amazing experience. It makes people realize a whole bunch of things that they would never realize otherwise. I have seen people spend four years at college and come back without the racism, misogyny or homophobia that they started out with. It is truly inspirational.
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