What the Grammys Gave Us

What did the Grammys actually give us last night? A glimpse into the future.

Certainly it was an array of the full range of musical expression and a synthesis of the most unlike forms of music: Take Metallica and Lang Lang: Who could have guessed?  Who would have believed they could play on the same stage?  It was a musical marriage that no one could have foreseen.

…And then there was another kind of marriage that the Grammys gave to the world last night:

Audience members participate in a same-sex wedding during a performance of “Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis at the 56th annual Grammy Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Thirty-three straight and gay couples lined the aisle dressed in wedding finery. They exchanged rings near the end of Sunday night’s show televised on CBS.

It was a glimpse of the realization of the great American experiment of democracy and equal rights. It was the real meaning of “All men are created equal.”

That’s the way it’s going be everywhere someday.

No doubt, the extreme right will try to stop it; but they can only slow it down, just the way they slowed down every progressive movement on the trajectory of equality:

Women’s right; minority rights; gay rights…and any other “rights” struggle that doesn’t conform to their rigid beliefs.

I hope I live to see what I saw at the Grammys in every town, in every city, in every country on Earth:

The commitment of love, called marriage: Color-blind, Gender-blind, every-difference-among-the human-race blind.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Eleanor Roosevelt