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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Payment Due

It's laugh out loud funny to me that some homophobic bigots who offered serious material support to efforts to amend the California Constitution to write permanent second class citizenship status to a minority of their fellow citizens are now pouting and stamping their feet that their Constitutional right to free expression as a minority with an "opinion" about whether some people aren't really fully people at all is somehow threatened just because everybody worth knowing hates them now and doesn't want to work with them anymore now that their appalling beliefs about their queer acquaintances, family members, and friends are actually known.

Needless to say, one of the reasons to be something of a First Amendment absolutist is precisely because it is better that hateful and dangerous positions and those who hold them are exposed to the light of critical scrutiny rather than insulated from the commonsense objections of their peers or conspiring in secrecy.

But quite apart from such considerations one wonders why our righteous red-blooded Californian and friendly out-of-state bigots are shrinking from the echoes bouncing back off the walls of the world from their initial proud exclamations of bigotry, now that they discover that those with whom they disagree might have an opinion on the matter as well?

Hey, you've got to fly your bigot flag high, baby, if you really want to remake America in the image of that dazzling straightjacket utopia that moved you to sign that check or that petition after all!

And, well, if you fail to achieve that button-down closet-case moral Republic in this lifetime, if instead you have to pay the price in permanent marginalization, if that's what comes from taking your stand, well, so be it, right? If that's what you really care about? That's why they say it takes courage to stand up for what you believe in, after all. Did you think all that was just words?

Starting to have second thoughts about being an intolerant asshole now that you've had a good look at the company you have to keep when all the bleeding heart secular liberals you privately disdain don't invite you to their parties anymore?

You'll have to forgive us if we're not moved to tears by your appeals to Constitutional principles ten minutes after you try to wipe your ass with the Constitution.

(PS: Grow up, change your mind, embrace diversity, get past your stupid fears, and join the work of repairing the damage bigots like you have caused and most of us bleeding heart secularists will forgive you soon enough -- it's not like most of us haven't been ignorant and stupid in our own lives, after all.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know... Most homophobic person I knew was alcoholic, who had regularily beaten his wife... (Until she simply ran away with two kids.)

That closed this case for me. If THOSE are "traditional family values of Christian civilization" (and by all accounts they are.) I want none of that crap. Period. When I see an advocate ot those, I always remember that family. Who needs mythical "propaganda" with "friends" like those?

I also don't want any "pro-life" hypocricy. If you are "pro-life" make it so that having kids and wanting a decent life for them isn't the surest path to Chapter 13, and you'll get all the new life you can handle. Do so-called "pro-life" advocates do that? Not a chance. They ban abortions. Sorry guys, you aren't pro-life. You are anti-abortion bigots. And yes, I have the first-hand experience here too. (And that experience also taught me that being pro-abortion isn't the same thing as "pro-choice". If you can't support a kid, you have no meaningful choice anyway. Less power-words, more babies!)

Anne Corwin said...

Wha...so basically we've now got people who promoted Prop 8 complaining about people not wanting to hang around them as much on the basis of their bigotry?

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but wow. That's pretty bad.

Dale Carrico said...

Well, there are proliferating boycotts that are threatening to hit people on the bottom line, but it seems to me the principle is the same. Not to mention that organized bigots are all too happy in my experience to try the boycott gambit themselves at the drop of the hat when it suits them anyway -- they are just increasingly frustrated at the realization that in a secular multicultural America bigot boycotts are a losing proposition while boycotting bigots is a winning one.

Anonymous said...

Well now, you've got to link me to some places talking about this, Dale, preferably some news sources.

I'm all the way up here in Canada, a bit removed, but I know a bunch of people who'll get a grin out of this stuff for the first time since Prop 8 passed.

By the way, did you read that the Bishop of Lancaster is complaining that educated Catholics are to blame for the shifting thinking among some church faithful on issues like contraception and gay marriage? Ah, yes, that old chestnut: live a bit and come to see the humanity in your fellow human beings and you're corrupt. Wow! What a victory for bigotry! Enemy identified: Smart is the new evil!