History forgives and exhonerates those who repent
I can't remember how the FaceBook convo went, but it was something to do with one of J. K. Rowling's usual musings.
'She won't be remembered kindly in thirty years or so.', I chimed in.
'All that being on the wrong side of history stuff isn't an argument., My friend replied.
And he was right. Claiming someone would be on 'The Wrong Side of History' isn't an argument in any debate about the rights and wrongs of taking whatever position on an issue, and it's not based on reason. Why, then, did I say it about J. K. Rowling? Well, the statement was a prediction, and one that I made with certainty.
The political climate oscillates. Left to right, and back again. In the bigger scheme of things, society does progress towards compassion, kindness and understanding, despite the regressions. The people who voted for Donald Trump, and for Reform UK, will realise that fascism will do nothing to improve the quality of life for the majority. The next generation will rebel against authority, as the young always do. The 'woke' movement and LGBT community, being driven underground, will create subcultures. Subcultures create popular culture, and everyone will swear they were part of it. One day it's going to be very unfashionable to complain about 'woke'.
And discrimination against minorities will hurt organisations, corporations and institutions, in a way that's extremely diificult to come back from. The Church, for example, finds it near impossible to evangelise to gay people, and largely to anyone with gay friends and relatives. We all know what's really meant by 'dirordered inclinations' and 'not being in a state of grace', because previous generations experienced that sentiment in action.
The Republican party in the United States, and the Labour Party in Britain, will be remembered, in thirty years' time, for their complicity in the oppression of transgender people, their support of genocide and all their rhetoric about immigrants. Republicans cannot, when it becomes fashionable again, claim to be the advocates of freedom or the Constitution, because their current actions speak louder than their future words.
Back to J. K. Rowling: She was once renowned as an excellent author and storyteller, but that won't be her legacy. More than likely she'll be remembered by future generations for her bitterness and spite towards a minority, and perhaps for the young lives that were lost because of it. Her works are already being overshadowed by that.
History does forgive and exhonerate those who repent, though. It's something the Bible teaches us in a very simple and profound way. The bigger the mistakes, the greater the awakening of one's conscience, and the harder the act of repentance, the greater the love.
St. Paul is celebrated as perhaps the greatest evangelist of Christianity, and even as a founder of it. He is almost never remembered as a persecutor and murderer of Christians.
We've all read or heard about celebrities who said something politically incorrect on Twitter, then offered some generic non-apology after being called out, and had their careers marred ever since. Most of us know the accusations were over something inconsequential, and the 'apologies' were grovelling career-preserving bullshit. Their careers never really move on from that.
But imagine if J. K. Rowling, Kier Starmer or Wes Streeting said something along the lines of 'I'm deeply sorry, and deeply ashamed, about what's being done to transgender people. I'm going to support them and try reversing some of the damage by...'. Imagine it was said as a genuine statement of repentance, from the heart. Wouldn't they, then, be embraced as heroes by the LGBT community, and maybe even loved as such?