On Wed, June 19, 2013 9:25 am, Melinda Shore wrote: > On 6/19/13 8:12 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote: >> On 6/19/13 10:00 AM, Melinda Shore wrote: >>> On 6/19/13 7:56 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote: >>>> Why do you believe that my opinions are unexamined? I have been >>>> thinking and reading about social, cultural, and personal change >>>> for a very long time. >>> >>> You made an assertion that's at least a little ahistorical, >> >> That depends on which historians you've been reading. > > Peter, it's a fact in the US and Canada that court cases preceded > civil rights protections which preceded social change. This has been > true for racial minorities, women, glbt folk, etc. I expect that > there are historians who'd argue otherwise but allow me to suggest > that if so they are very, very far out of the mainstream. Civil rights? A "whites only" lunch counter or drinking fountain is a matter of civil rights. When there is active prohibition on a class there is a matter of civil rights. But the mere fact that the numbers are overwhelmingly one-sided does not make a civil rights issue. Between 1995 and 2008, 84% of the people killed by lighting strikes were male. Is that evidence of discrimination? Is that a civil rights issue? What do you propose to do to rectify that statistic? Dan.