A parting gift for the homophobes
Your time is at an end. It has finally reached the point where enough people have seen your arguments for the thinly-veiled hatred they really are. The more we argue against your bigotry, the more you have to argue back, and the more exposure people get to the venomous prejudice that lies at the heart of your warped ideology. Every time one of your leaders appears on television, more good people question their support of you. Every time you hold a rally, more people get to see the rabid, frothing hatred you espouse.
The reliqions which once supported you now begin to disavow you. The people who once would never have questioned that homosexuality was an abomination now start to see us as human beings, with lives and families and jobs and feelings, and start to move away from your insane beliefs.
Parents who might once have abandoned gay children to the streets are now attending the weddings of their sons and daughters, as they marry the spouse of their choice, whatever gender they may be. Employers who may have once been repelled by a candidate showing gay traits are now giving them a fair chance. Friends who might once have rejected a gay person are defending them; celebrities coming out of the closet are no longer blacklisted. We haven’t won, not yet, but we’re making progress, and for the first time in my life, I can really imagine a time when I won’t be afraid to hold my boyfriend’s hand in public.
Your hatred is no longer acceptable.
It has been my privilege to witness your fall from popularity, to see the reasonable and compassionate among you realize that they’ve been following the rhetoric of hatred, and back away from you. You’re being relegated to the dumpster of ideological history, along with flat-earthers and moon hoax believers, and I think you’ll find yourself right at home there. As the prevalence of your attitude recedes, leaving little islands of ignorance behind it, I like to think of groups of homophobes banding together in fortresses barricaded against the evils of the outside world, muttering about the perils of gay people in dark, damp bunkers while outside, the rest of the world revels in its newfound freedom.
The same hatred which you used to persecute me will now condemn you to a life of marginalization and scorn.
And yet… there’s one thing that really sticks in my craw. Whenever an argument about the rights of homosexuals goes on, some bigot always objects to being labelled with the term “homophobe.” And rightly so; the term implies that their attitude on the subject is a psychological disorder, that they can’t help the way they feel, and that they’re not responsible for the vile ideas they spew. The alternatives to the term are few, and I don’t really think that they convey the depth of the ignorance necessary to support your position. But this morning, it struck me; there is a term that really conveys the contempt in which I hold you, that gives people an insight into the hatred that stands behind your contemptible beliefs. A term which fairly associates you with other lunatic hate-filled wackos with whom you have much more in common than you’d like to believe.
So, to me, you are no longer homophobes. I have a better term for you.
Straight supremacists.
What is this supposed to mean? It seems like a thinly-veiled “Ever heard of AIDS???” statement - though I could be wrong about that (I would like to hope I am wrong anyway). I am straight and even I am tired of the lectures that the gay members of this board seem to be subjected to ad nauseum.