I was just at Woodfield Mall and Armani Exchange had a Valentine’s Day display in its window composed of three black and white photos, each more than ten feet high, of couples getting up close and steamy.  It’s a very familiar kind of image so I had to do a double-take to be sure of what I saw — that there was only one hetero couple, flanked by boy-boy and girl-girl pairs.  How wonderful to see a display like that in the most mainstream retail center in the West Suburbs.  

I also saw a teenage couple dressed as old-school punks, in tartans and leather and high-tops and spiked mohawks literally 2 feet high.  

Thirty years ago homosexuality and punk rock were shocking and horrifying.  Now they are almost completely mainstream.  Who even knows whether those two kids even identify themselves as "punk"?  When I was in high school during the 80s, kids dressed like that at Pekin Mall would have known they were sending out an open invitation for Metalheads to fight them.  Maybe these were just having fun on a Saturday night.

Peace can come from knowing that dramatic changes can happen in our society in a matter of "only" a few decades.  Although I must admit I still want to gloat that the struggles of conservative religionists will ultimately prove to have been meaningless and resent the fact that so many people still have to struggle so hard against what seems to be the American love of stupidity for stupidity’s sake.   

But I’m learning not to think about people I don’t like, and as much as I sympathize with the struggles of the oppressed I know that the less I think about oppressors the better.  

Still, how can I really claim to be teaching peace when I have no explanation as to why some people have to struggle?