Bigots aren't entitled to be bigots.

[mik3cap]

I was listening to NPR yesterday, and was witness to yet another of the endless attempts by homophobic, power hungry, politicizing bigots to take civil rights away from people. This time it was a discussion of the upcoming political tempest in a teapot - since gay marriage worked so great for Republicans in 2004, they're going to take aim at gay adoption in 2006. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of children currently adopted by gay singles and couples, there are 16 or so states working towards legislation to ban gay adoption; legislation that will no doubt be ready to bring out the "religious whackjob" (as they are called by Tom DeLay's staff) voting contingent in November.

What I really hate most is that any time I hear one of these "debates" no one ever confronts the anti-gay/lesbian speaker for exercising a moral prejudice against people they've never met. They never start with questioning their base assumptions - why are you assuming a negative environment for children cared for by gay/lesbian parents? Why do you implicitly suggest that homosexual is equivalent to over-sexed? And I'm always pissed off when they discuss "gay lifestyle" and "sexual choice" as if sexual preference were something you could just suddenly decide on the spot and change.

How many gay/lesbian people do you actually know? If gays and lesbians aren't entitled to the same rights as everyone else, what is it about them that makes them so different? What's the difference between discriminating against someone based on skin color, religion, or sexual preference? At what point in your life did you "choose" to be straight? Can you choose not to be straight?

These are the questions that bigots need to be confronted with. I really don't think it's that hard to show someone they're being a bigot - it's just that people are rarely confronted with the truth of their bigotry, under the guise of "everyone's entitled to an opinion." I couldn't agree less! The long and short of it is: bigots aren't entitled to be bigots, and misinformed people are not entitled to being misinformed.

Comments

re: bigotry

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think the Democrats are trying to lose to the Republicans by playing by the enemy's rules.

The thing that really sticks in my craw is how they always accuse bisexuals of being bigamists.

[nhcooncat.livejournal.com]

Hi Mike --- it's Elise, from NH (waving southeastward)

Sure, they're entitled to *be* bigots. But they shouldn't be entitled to go unchallenged if they're given a media platform --- which is what's been happening in the media far too often lately.

One of the least-used but most effective arguments against the fundies that I've seen is the following: Homosexuality has been documented in 400 animal species. *Particularly* if you're dealing with a creationist, the implication is that God intended a good deal of homosexuality, since the entire animal kingdom is supposedly still just as he made it.

Usually takes a bit of air out of their sails. Of course, the really hard-cores will make retorts like "God intended man to be better than animals" or "Science is inherently flawed and full of liberal bias", etc., etc. At which point I guess one just has to say "Well, you're entitled to even *that* opinion".

Elise
(making her debut on LiveJournal)

[nhcooncat.livejournal.com]

But your idea that "the truth...needs to be about something disputable" simply doesn't work with fundamentalists of any kind, nor has it ever. As soon as the religion card is played, the argument becomes something about *faith*, which by definition is a belief in something unproveable. For them, faith = truth, end of story, no debate welcome (and none really possible, since we're dealing with things which can't be proven in the first place). It all shuts down true debate, but some people seem to feel that it means the religious person has won the argument instead. Conservatives complain about the problem of liberal political correctness, but nothing could be more PC than Tom DeLay's staff referring to DeLay's base as "religious whackjobs" behind their backs while simultaneously cowtowing to them right and left on the political stage.

The problem is that fundamentalists (of several stripes, but in the USA, mostly Christian) have been given a free pass for a long time --- and increasingly as of late. The Bushies talk about freedom of religion being one of the paramount American virtues, one which should be upheld at all costs. But what they forget is that the founding fathers, while generally observant Christians, tended to be Deists (i.e., in a nutshell: yes, they believed in God and that God created the universe, but they also believed that God has been off playing golf, sightseeing, fishing, etc. at some other corner of the universe since then and isn't particularly watching over us whatsoever. In other words, it's time for us to get over ourselves as being important, in His point of view of anyone else's. Doing things in His name or to please Him isn't really the point). Further, freedom of religion must also mean freedom *from* religion --- that's the part that the Right always seems to forget.

What is an ethical heathen to do?