Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have one of the biggest selling and best CDs of the year in The Heist with hits like Can't Hold Us, Thrift Shop and - because I'm a Paddy - one of my favourites called Irish Celebration. All fun songs with upbeat tempos. But recently I heard another song from the CD and it was so different from the rest. It is slower, has a message, some might think it a little preachy, but nonetheless a good song. It is called Same Love.
You may have guessed by the name it is about people of the same sex who love each other.
I have lived in Prince George for 24 years and have noticed a big change in people's attitudes toward gay people. When I first moved here, the high-top runner and mullet-wearing city of P.G. didn't seem to have any gay people. I'm sure it did but they were afraid what might happen if people knew.
With a lot of education people's attitudes seem to have changed over the years. I know there are still a lot of bigots and hatred out there. Only a couple of years ago we had a photo of former mayor Dan Rogers on our front page chatting about municipal politics with some high school students that were gay or lesbian and we had several bigoted letters to the editor about how terrible that was.
Yesterday France saw its first legal same-sex marriage, something B.C. has had for a while. In Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's song it says "The right wing conservatives think it's a decision, And you can be cured with some treatment and religion, Man-made rewiring of a predisposition... And i can't change, even if I tried, Even if I wanted to."
People can't change who they are, but they can change their attitude and how they think. And it seems that people's attitudes and how they think is changing, just look at France.
You can listen to the song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0
