When did miscegenation become OK?

There are the high-profile examples, of course: in the late 50s, Sammy Davis, Jr., enjoyed a series of public relationships with various blond bombshells that netted him a lifetime of harassment and death threats, while still commanding the loyalty of legions of black and white fans; later there was Clarence Thomas’s wife, who struck a blow for women’s independence in 1991 when she declared that Anita Hill was a psychotic who “was probably in love with” the man she claimed had sexually harassed her. And, in 1967, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” was released as a serious social drama, in which dreamboat black man Sidney Poitier is judged barely acceptable by liberal white parents willing to stretch their own principles to the point of martyrdom; in 2005 it was remade as a comedy in which Ashton Kutcher is adjudged an imbecile by every living person in the United States including Bernie Mac.

So, I guess we can say that some time between the late 50s and now, something changed. Popular, wealthy, and privileged blacks went from a point where they could satisfy their jungle desires for relationships with whites if they were willing to risk their careers and their lives, to a point where they could publicly reject whites as not measuring up to their standards. And, between the late 60s and the early 90s, where once it was barely imaginable that a black man would be an acceptable in-law in the eyes of “enlightened” society, it became possible for white women married to black men to dictate to black women how they should let black men treat them - and be applauded by white Republicans for doing so. It appears, then, that at some point in the 70s or 80s, it became possible in US society for inter-racial couples to present themselves as standing inside the accepted social picture of what married couples were supposed to look like.

But there’s more.

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The latest wrinkle in the emergency contraception “conscience clause” business is a nurse at Eastern Illinois University who applied for a job that involved dispensing EC, stated in the job interview she would not perform that duty, and then sued when she didn’t get the job.

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Archaeopteryx notes some Kiwi wingnuttery about sex education (I’m sorry to hear it’s taking root down there, too). In response to the wonderfully-named program to encourage safe sex - “No Rubba, No Hubba Bubba” - the local wingers had their usual complaints about the failure of the program to include their particular brand of social conditioning:

Sex without a sense of morality is like a car without brakes

- to which Archaeopteryx has the definitive reply:

That’s not what I heard. I think a better analogy is “Abstinence-only without real knowledge is like a society full of willfully ignorant parents with an STI epidemic among youths.”

That’s sayin’ it.