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Acceptable abuse
Nov. 19th, 2008 08:46 amI'm a little stunned this morning.
As practically anyone with sense predicted, the homosexual community reacted extremely badly to the passage of Prop. 8. It's one thing to have had rights denied to you for centuries, it's another to have recently-attained rights taken away by people for no other reason than they don't like you.
So, why am I stunned? Well, certain religious organizations were active in the process to remove those rights, and plenty of others stood complacently by. So, gay people are lashing out at these religious groups. And the stunning thing is that religious folks are acting surprised and hurt!
I swear, I'm reading this in many places online, such as LiveJournal, news sites, opinion blogs: "We're just treating you like abominations and taking away a chance at happiness you briefly had. We don't understand why you're so upset. Why would you have a problem with this?" Of course, it's not those specific words, but it's absolutely the attitude. "We don't understand why you're so angry, and honestly, we're a bit offended."
Frankly, I've always attributed discrimination against gay people, in most cases, to malice. "We don't like you, and it's socially okay to mistreat you, so we're gonna." I never before realized that someone could be unaware that treating another human that way was wrong. "Why does this bother you?"
Wow.
As practically anyone with sense predicted, the homosexual community reacted extremely badly to the passage of Prop. 8. It's one thing to have had rights denied to you for centuries, it's another to have recently-attained rights taken away by people for no other reason than they don't like you.
So, why am I stunned? Well, certain religious organizations were active in the process to remove those rights, and plenty of others stood complacently by. So, gay people are lashing out at these religious groups. And the stunning thing is that religious folks are acting surprised and hurt!
I swear, I'm reading this in many places online, such as LiveJournal, news sites, opinion blogs: "We're just treating you like abominations and taking away a chance at happiness you briefly had. We don't understand why you're so upset. Why would you have a problem with this?" Of course, it's not those specific words, but it's absolutely the attitude. "We don't understand why you're so angry, and honestly, we're a bit offended."
Frankly, I've always attributed discrimination against gay people, in most cases, to malice. "We don't like you, and it's socially okay to mistreat you, so we're gonna." I never before realized that someone could be unaware that treating another human that way was wrong. "Why does this bother you?"
Wow.
