Everyday Evil Reborn
[CAPTION: Alex Wilson is kicked by a school integration protester after refusing to run from a mob near Little Rock Central High.]
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Ignorance and fear are at the heart of evils of all kinds. Two of them are racism and homophobia. Others include sexism and anti-semitism.
First, no one speaks for god and the bible is not the literal truth. Anyone who claims otherwise in the first case is a liar and in the second is a hypocrite.
Third, think of the images of black children walking into a newly desegregated school with men and women protesters all around pointing to passages in the bible. Think of the preachers and leaders just a couple decades ago who denounced interracial marriage as unnatural, immoral and against God's plan. The phrase some of them used was 'purity of race'. I would imagine the KKK still use these supremacist ideologies though majorities have finally, finally decided to abandon them. The Supreme Court ruled that banning interracial marriage was unconstitutional only in 1967!
[CAPTION: Teen-agers storm Baltimore's City Hall in protest against school integration, 1955.]
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Fourth, majorities now are shamefully making the same mistakes of their ancestors when it comes to NOT evolving their treatment and understanding of a minority section of society. In this case it's not a race but a sexuality which the majority is refusing to upgrade to full human status.
Look above in these posts and you will find phrases used by those who wish to keep homosexual people defined as subhuman. These phrases can be matched almost word for word to the phrases used by whites opposing full equality for blacks during the african-american civil rights movement. These phrases, just as in the case of racism, are based always on supremacist ideologies. We are superior; they are not. We have god on our side; they do not. We know what's best for society and children; they do not.
[CAPTION: Autherine Lucy's enrolled at the all-white University of Alabama in 1956. Students, adults and even groups from outside of Alabama shouted racial epithets, threw eggs, sticks and rocks, and generally attempted to block her way. Protestors here were University of Alabama Students burning desegregation literature.
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Fifth, homosexuals are an easily understood group of people. Nature exists along a spectrum. Sexuality exists along a spectrum. Homosexuals and bisexual people fit along the same spectrum as heterosexual people. This is reality. Heterosexual people are the great majority of people. They always will be. The existence of homosexual people never has nor never will be a threat to the propagation of the species. Homosexual people, like so many small minority groups of people, have long been misunderstood, mislabeled, mischaracterized, misdiagnosed and mistreated. Society has no more to fear from us than they do from the left-handed.
[CAPTION: In 1956, Clinton High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, was set to be the first high school in the South to be integrated after the Brown decision. Protests and riots ensued until several white citizens escorted the African American students to class, as shown here. One of the escorts was badly beaten afterwards.]
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Sixth, most people are cowards when it comes to standing up and opposing a widely held belief. If homosexual people were rounded up and sent to 'reparative therapy' camps, many people would gladly give up their friends, family, colleagues and neighbors if thier church and political leaders told them it was God's Will. But fortunately, many heterosexual people have moved past the neurosis of their ancestors and are able to see us as fully human, natural and normal. It is they who have stood with us and who have helped spread the word that these anti-gay attitudes are best left in the Dark Ages.
[CAPTION: The integration of Central High School, Arkansas, 1957. Hate filled spectators taunt and shout.]
Finally, now in 2005 it is no longer ignorance which fuels the greatest opposition to gay lesbian civil rights, it is fear. Most people today who oppose the redefining of gay and lesbian people as fully human know exactly what they're doing. Most know of the overwhelming evidence which refutes the supremacist ideologies propping up their anti-gay views. Most know enough history to recognize that they're taking part in an age old custom, that of a majority stigmatizing, ostracizing, denigrating, dehumanizing, segregating, restricting and criminalizing the existence and character of a small minority group of people. The people who take part in this old game know exactly what they're doing. They are not ignorant in this way.
[CAPTION: An infamous anit-gay church in Topeka, Kansas includes many children in its protest activities held all over the country. The indoctrination of these children has obviously begun. The front row of children has been superimposed on the back row to create one image from two photos.]
But neither are they afraid of gay and lesbian people. What they are afraid of is standing up against tradition (no matter how cruel) and the leaders which defend it. These people cower shamefully behind the pulpit and willingly comply with the dictates of the flawed men who lead them. They will follow their cowardice to their graves just as the confederates did when they fought first to leave the union and then to defend their cherished slavery. 'Purity of Race' then has transformed into today's 'Sanctity of Marriage'. Jim Crow is being reborn as One Man One Woman. The wicked Jesse Helms has been replaced by the wicked Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. The racist white majority has evaporated but reappeared as the homophobic evangelical majority.
(Written in response to posts made on a local political web forum in Louisville, Kentucky. The posts were made as part of a topic I started entitled: America's Gays and Lesbians Tell Their Stories.)
Also see: Letter from Birmingham Jail -- "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." ~Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963.
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I grew up a "progressive" because I was not taught to hate. Cycles of bigotry are insidious because they are bred largely through families and extended families (churches). It's hard to interfere with lessons learned at the dinner table.
The young learn from their elders but they also learn from their peers. I imagine the discomfort, if not terror, of those first black children to integrate Southern schools. By parallel, I can also imagine the danger felt by gay youth now more openly outing themselves to peers.
If we believe that America has been racially "enlightened," that blessing grew in significant part from youthful peer socialization between the races.
Time will tell if the same acceptance grows from the bravery of young gays now organizing in our schools.
Homosexuality and school segregations towards blacks is not the same thing. Homsexuality is evil, being black is not. Hate the sin, not the sinner. This is something that some alleged Christians get wrong. They're not acting like true Christians when they go around being violent towards homosexuals and hating them. They need to respect homosexuals as human beings and help homosexuals rid themselves of their sinful lifestyle, not literally beat it out of them. That's not going to work and it's not what God would want people to do. It will just make them want to hate Christians and the truth that homosexuality it wrong and evil, and it will make them feel more rejected. You can't fight hate with hate otherwise you're acting no better than them. You fight hate with love and bring your light into their darkness. A person isn't going to want to see the light if you keep hating them and being violent towards them. Why would they want to come to you when you're acting like that? You have to be respectful and always speak the truth.
Anti-Gay Religious Efforts springs from the same source as Anti-Black Religious Efforts did. Both were supremacist ideologies preached by men behind pulpits pointing to passages in the Bible to make their case.
The most heinous wicked part is that people like you easily buy into the crap preached by these 'men of faith' as TRUTH. Just like many racists in years past, people like you just swallow hook line and sinker the disgusting lies and propaganda being used to denigrate gay people. Just like racists of yesterday, you will come to be ashamed of your conformity with the outright evil that is masquerading as righteousness.
But then, maybe you won't. It may be your children or children's children who will be ashamed of you and your irrational hysterical hateful beliefs which do and did so much harm to decent loving law-abiding wonderful gay and lesbian people and youth.
Homosexuality is neither evil nor a sin. It is a natural common variation in nature. But it doesn't matter how obvious this fact is to people like you. You get your power by victimizing others 'in the name of God'. You get your power by arrogantly feeling certain that 'you speak for God'. You get your power by misusing ancient medieval cruel out-dated texts like the Bible to 'justify your present day prejudice, fear and hatred'.
So go on believing the whole 'love the sinner hate the sin' slogan and the 'Sanctity of Marriage' slogan. But in the end, you are only participating in today's variation of a supremacist world view in which some self-annointed chosen ones desperately seek to scapegoat and stomp out a small minority community of people who simply want to live in equality and dignity and free from the fear of the kind of spiritual violence you and your kind perpetuate so confidently.
Ask yourself: How far are you willing to go to deny gay and lesbian people their right to speak out, join in, participate, live openly, love one another, protect their families, marry their loved one, adopt their foster child, attend church or synagogue, go to work, serve their country, meet you as an equal citizen, shake your hand, live as a fully human being?
Some with your mentality have already talked about kicking gay and lesbian people out of their cities, executing all gay and lesbian people, rounding up all gay and lesbian people and putting them in camps. Are you honest enough to admit that you are willing to go along or at least do nothing to prevent these sorts of atrocities from happening and ALL IN THE NAME OF GOD?
I hope you think carefully before answering. Let's be clear, that's the direction the kind of people you proudly hang you hat alongside want to go. It's the logical result of vilifying your gay brothers, sisters, children, colleagues, parishioners, neighbors, friends and citizens. You ought to be ashamed of perpetuating the lie that gay human beings are somehow evil. Shame on you for repeating such disgusting vile immoral arrogant crap. I'm sure others who know you and your views are already ashamed of your complicity with the religious evil you so easily have allowed to wash over and through your mind.
I wish you peace and salvation from your brainwashed fascist supremacist world view and hope that you will soon recognize that these men who whisper in your ear do not speak for any sort of God Being in the sky. They speak for their own interal fears, prejudices and hate. You have merely agreed to submit to their insane rhetoric.
Patrick made really good points, I believe in God and everything, but it's some of the religions that think they are so righteous in the name of God to treat gays and lesbians like they are sinners, and it's an illness that can be cured by prayer and repentance to be straight... Bah.
I talked with my parents about gays and lesbians, and we had a debate about it, because I do have gay friends that come over, and sometimes my parents don't want him in the house, and it's not fair because they would say "Why you hanging around with them, they're going to end up doing strange things with you, and you'll turn up to be one of them".
I said to my dad, I'm straight and I'll be friends with anyone that's gay or lesbian, even for life and I'll defend them because they get so mistreated everday in this corrupt society we live in.
My dad's all like so what if your gay friend kisses you in the cheek? Would you run away? I said of course not, I will not run away, I'll tell him politely that I don't fit into that lifestyle, but I'll still be your friend. My dad looks at me strange and just chuckles, "yea right you would be running". I told him no I won't because I'm not homophobic.
I also hate it when he interrupts me when I try to make a point across, but doesn't give me the time to do that because he blabbers out loud about other stuff and starts ranting saying "So since Homosexuality is not a sin in your opinion, is it okay to rob a bank.. Is it okay to murder somebody? I think Homosexuality falls into those categories. It is a "SIN"... also my mom gives me this "Oh, God made Man and Woman.. That's normal." Blah, Blah, yadda, yadda.. Wow I heard that before.
My parents just laugh out loud again, and nod their heads saying "We don't want him to come over no more, he can turn you're brothers and sisters gay if he stays any longer." I love my parents, I hate to say this, but they're ignorant and they don't know the real truth about Gays and Lesbians and what they go through every single day, they just believe whatever religion tells them.. Like it's a sin.
Now, my friend can't come over no more, and I'm bummed out.. I still see him at school, we're still good friends and talk about anything. I just treat him like a normal human being just like everyone else. In my opinion Gays and Lesbians should be treated like straight people and to me it's not a sin or a crime. The sad news is, that these homophobes are still out their today threatening to kill and get rid of them, and protest like crazy in the name of God.
What scares me is that they're teaching their own kids to bash them, and when those kids grow up to be adults, they'll teach their kids the same thing their parents have taught them.. When will this ever stop?
John I hear what you are saying and understand your frustration completely. Dealing with irrational prejudice in one's family can be especially difficult. I know that I always believed that if I just explained clearly why racism and homophobia were and are immoral that the racists and anti-gay folk in my family would change their minds.
Unfortunately, other than my mother, the racists in my family remain racists and the anti-gay ones remain anti-gay. I've learned that it isn't bad information that prevents people we love from letting go of bigoted nonsensical stereotypes and views but rather it is pride and stubbornness which gets in the way.
In my case, it seems as if the racists and anti-gay people in my family become incredibly covetous of even the most hateful views taught to them by their own parents, friends, schools, churches and colleagues. It seems to me that some people are extremely afraid of absorbing such a profound shift in their thinking. Simply, some people are very afraid of changing, especially when it has the possiblity of setting them apart from what they perceive as the accepted majority way of thinking.
This type of resistance to evolving one's views according to new more enlightened information is human nature. Thankfully, each new generation, like you, naturally adopt these more humane factual perspectives like the ones which treat gay and lesbian people as natural and normal people deseriving of dignity and equality. That's why generation gaps are blessings in disguise.
Thanks for commenting.
I am a bit disappointed in your inaccurately skewed representation of the CHS desegregation. First, Clinton, TN is 30 miles away from Knoxville and in no way associated – it is not even in the same county. I think it remiss that you did not mention that the protestors were NOT citizens of Clinton; and this includes the ONLY violent protestors.
Our citizenry, of Clinton, TN, organized a home guard of special force deputies from the PRIVATE SECTOR, a group brave enough to step forward and protect EVERYONE threatened by these propaganda-spreading racists, attempting to dissuade the violence until the national guard finally helped.
I understand and empathize with your particular plight, but your quick and slanted fragment about August 26, 1956, and a photo which many of us see as a proud and brave legacy for our little town, is not only irresponsible, but also insulting. If you are interested in a bit more context, please see this article: Clinton High School Desegregation.
Our struggle was not something that should be manipulated for shock value; it trivializes what happened here, as well as your overall credibility.
Respectfully,
Jessica