History buffs: an observation.

[Lyric]

Do you find it as funny as I do that the colony of John Winthrop wound up permitting gay marriage before the colony that Roger Williams founded? Knowing what I know about those two, I have to say, I never thought such a thing would happen.

Social evolution is a funny thing sometimes.

:hi:

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Winthrop was really pretty generous in theology and compassion

Roger Williams was a hardcore, strict, fairly narrow-thinking guy.

I'm curious, though, about your proof that Winthrop allowed gay marriage.

[Lyric]

2. Oh no, I meant the modern-day evolutions of those colonies

Massachusetts and Rhode Island, respectively.

I find it difficult to reconcile your characterization of Winthrop and Williams, respectively, with what I know of the two. Roger Williams was a far more compassionate and egalitarian thinker than Winthrop, at least in everything I've studied. Whereas Winthrop's "city on the hill" worldview led him to concern himself largely with how European aristocratic society viewed the colonists, Williams was concerned mostly with religious toleration, more justice in relations between colonists and Native Americans, and protecting dissenting points of view.

Of course, neither was what we'd call a "liberal" today, but the colony that Williams founded upon the ideals of greater emphasis on personal liberty, individualism, and tolerance of alternative views would seem to be a much more likely evolutionary ancestor of modern New England liberalism than Winthrop's stodgy Massachusetts Bay Colony and its strict imposition of religion, government (namely, him--he once claimed that losing an election was irrelevant, because God had "chosen" him to govern) and cultural homogeny.

What are your thoughts?