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Conservatives tried to prevent teaching of evolution in public schools, but they failed.
Conservatives tried to block sex education in public schools, but they failed.
Conservatives tried to teach "creation" in public schools, but they failed.
Puritanical right-wingers made racial intermarriage a crime, but the liberal Warren court legalized it.
Puritanical right-wingers jailed gay lovers, but progressives on the high court legalized gay sex.
Fundamentalists fought gay marriage, but Democratic state legislatures and the Supreme Court legalized it.
Humanism means helping people, and secular means doing it without supernatural religion. Decade after decade, century after century, leftist reformers defeated conservatives to advance secular humanism. At the same time, churches and their magical beliefs faded enormously from western democracies. And recently, international warfare has virtually disappeared.
Pioneer Unitarian minister Theodore Parker said the arc of history bends toward justice - and Martin Luther King Jr., who spent young years as a Unitarian, adopted the phrase masterfully.
The past shows a clear pattern of human progress - of civilization bending toward justice. Let's hope it continues.
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