McLeod County Chronicle editor Rich Glennie might have opposed the rapid enactment of marriage equality, but he's turned his attention to new developments that seem far more threatening to him.
Drones. Secret wiretapping of reporters. I.R.S. investigations. Corporations using facial recognition software to track consumer behavior.
In You know, it’s sounding more like ‘1984’, Glennie notes that he's no fan of the freedom to marry:
Well, just like the Y2K millennium end-of-the-world scenario and the Mayan calendar doomsday predictions, the world did not end with the same-sex marriage bill passed recently by the Minnesota Legislature.
Despite this admission, Glennie's rhetoric does take on some violent sexual connotations:
This was the liberals’ one opportunity to foist their gay agenda onto the rest of us, who simply were not ready for such fast action from a traditionally slow-moving Legislature. . . .
There was no one to slow down the DFL juggernaut this session, and not only was gay marriage rammed down our throats, so has a whole truckload of new and expanded state taxes.
That truckload sound hard to take. But then he softens his tone, noting that many Christians were torn between strictures against same sex love and Jesus's great commandment to love one's neighbor as one's self--and that Minnesotans tend to recognize shades of gray on social issues:
To most Minnesotans, social issues are more gray than black-and-white. We tend to favor equal rights for all; we tend to defend the underdog; we tend to fight for fairness and openness.
So when the same-sex marriage push was made, it was with mixed feelings.
That being said, Glennie moves on to what he thinks is a real problem:
What Minnesotans, and Americans in general, should be more worried about, however, is the insidious intrusion of the federal government into our lives with increased use of domestic drones, the secret wiretapping of Associated Press journalists’ phone lines and the Internal Revenue Services’ revelations about zeroing in on specific political groups for more scrutiny.
To top it off was the “60 Minutes” report on Sunday that showed how facial recognition is being used to not only find criminals, but to identify your spending habits, where you used your credit cards and for what purchases. Corporations can then use that data to pinpoint their advertising campaigns.
Big government and big corporations diminishing civil liberties? He might be on to something.
Photo: Reuters used this image in a report on the Toovio marketing system, which uses phone GPS systems rather than facial recognition software. Oh, that's a relief.
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Might be? Depending on who you ask, Mr. Glennie is a little late to the party. But he is welcome nonetheless!
Posted by: Mike Worcester | May 23, 2013 at 04:26 PM