There is, said an Italian philosopher, nothing more difficult to engage in, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its outcome than taking the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

To be in the vanguard of change, to pursue an ideal or principle in the face of intransigent opposition or to take a stand against long-entrenched and widely accepted social prejudice, is always a task fraught with complications.

Yet despite the many obstacles they face, despite the resistance they encounter, this is the road an increasing number of Bermuda’s young people are opting to take.

In insular, tradition-bound Bermuda, more so than in most communities, even proposals for the most minor changes to the status quo tend to be met by suspicion or outright hostility.

There’s good reason why Bermuda is sometimes referred to as “The island where time stood still”, a community in which too many are content to cling to customs and practices which are long-since petrified, who prefer the insubstantial mirage of social stability to the temporary inconvenience of introducing even the most long overdue social change.

Consequently progress has always occurred here in an incremental and largely haphazard manner.

Bermuda’s reformers have been willing to make compromises with the established order of things, to accept less in the short term in order to realise long-term gains in the future.

This has been the strategy employed by everyone from Bermuda’s suffragettes to its de-segregationists, from those who marched for the Universal Adult Franchise to those who demonstrated to help secure the recognition of trade union rights and collective bargaining.

With very few exceptions, peaceful progress on any number of social fronts has been a protracted, trial-and-error affair.

While it’s fair to say the prospect of significant change always does contain within it the seeds of uncertainty and concern, in Bermuda almost any deviation from the norm is seized on as a sign of imminent social collapse, a portent that the floodgates of revolution are about to be opened.

However, there is a growing impatience among Bermuda’s more socially conscious and more socially engaged young people with the traditionally cautious means by which meaningful change has been achieved here.

More worldly, more tolerant and, by and large, entirely less interested in conforming to the accepted, if outdated, cultural conventions and social mores of the day than the generations which preceded them, they are increasingly vocal in their demands for change.

Bermuda’s political and economic progress over the last 50 years must be matched, our young people insist, by similar advances in the social arena. This mood is reflected in, among other things, the growing generational divide in Bermuda over the question of same-sex marriage

Politicians – at least those motivated by the desire to be re-elected – must try and balance the growing pressure for change with the willingness of the greater community to accommodate such change.

With the self-preservation instinct kicking in on both sides of the partisan divide, our Parliamentarians are – simply put – terrified to publicly embrace an idea many privately agree should be implemented in Bermuda.

However, the evidence suggests Bermuda’s young people are not going to be satisfied with the foot-dragging and delaying tactics which have slowed the process of change to a more socially acceptable pace in the past.

In a growing number of countries, including the United States following June’s watershed Supreme Court ruling, there is no longer any such thing as gay marriage. There is just marriage. And for a generation of Bermudians who have come of age believing equality is for everyone and social justice is indivisible, the Island’s reluctance to accept and adapt to new conditions and new norms is as unacceptable as it is inexplicable.

The late American statesman Robert F Kennedy, a passionate advocate of civil and human rights, once remarked the world “demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.

“It is a revolutionary world we live in (and) it is young people who must take the lead.”

Young people are indeed taking the lead in Bermuda on the question of same-sex marriage. And despite the undoubted difficulties and uncertainties involved, they seem to be in no doubt whatsoever about the ultimate outcome of their efforts.

— TIM HODGSON