This battle will be fought on many fronts, including the ones enumerated above.
The front I’m fighting it on, for now–I’ve fought it on many fronts and who knows what the future holds–is the anti-complacency front. This is strictly reactionary, but that’s OK for now. My plan is to simply react like a human being when people around me take it for granted that they live in a heterocentric world.
Does this make sense? In Jim Crow South, I’m sure there were plenty of white folk who felt no compunction saying racist things in the presence of black people. That’s a more dangerous proposition nowadays. Thus should it be for complacent heterocentrists who need to learn that their behavior is what belongs in the closet, not mine.
And I’m not just talking about anti-gay insults. I’m talking about the kind of patronizing bullshit that Starving Artist tosses around.
Basically, my plan is to live as if the future were here now: to call Uncle Toms on Uncle Tommery, to bristle at patronizing bullshit, and to react strongly to heterocentric language. Basically to make it difficult and uncomfortable for homophobes and heterocentrists; to drive them into the closet.
Well, let’s see…I’ve championed rather strongly in this thread the strong, dignified (and most importantly, effective) tactics used by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. It’s interesting to me…ah, no it isn’t…it’s silly and ridiculous to me that you choose to label this type of approach as patronizing. Again, the motivations and intent you perceive are all in your head. You are so blinded by your anti-bigot bigotry that you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Fair enough. We’ve both spoken our piece and said what we had to say, which is the idea here, right? Perhaps we should just agree to disagree, eh, wot?
SA, my fine dumpling, have you noticed that Left Hand of Dorkness has been saying pretty much what I know you intend to convey? And that he hasn’t been drawing the hostile fire you have?
Yes, indeed. Part of that IS your history on the board influencing how people perceive you and your message. Yup, it IS a long hard slog to overcome first impressions. I know you’re working hard at it. (Pat on head; doggie biscuit tossed to leaping canine. ;))
But then there’s the matter of tone. A subtle thing, especially in this written medium, lacking the nonverbal cues of face-to-face communication. You’ve run into this kind of reaction to your “keep it civil” comments in other threads. At times, you’ve been led to examine your words and agree that they could be read to give offense. Which I give you due props for: You’re capable of admitting when you are in error, which is a quality I wish some other posters here had.
Anyway, I’m wandering from the point I started out to make (and not for the first time; why, there was the thread where…).
Ahem. The folks who are getting angry with you are there on the front lines of discrimination, day after day, suffering its effects directly, emotionally ravaged by the injustices they and those they love face. I daresay at least some of them perceive you as safely ensconced in the bastion of heterosexuality and unable to truly understand the battle you would prescribe strategy for. You may well find that unfair, and their take on your advice unwarranted. It is, nevertheless, a legitimate reaction, as I read what’s been written here.
Warning: Analogy ahead! Take this for whatever it’s worth: Even beekeepers get stung when harvesting honey. How much more likely to rile the hive is the bear who blunders in?
“It” here means “Activists behaving like buttheads,” right? If so, I agree: I’ve not seen activists behaving like buttheads about the gay marriage issue in real life. And if none do, super: my cautionary note is for nothing.
But I would suggest that venting in the Pit can have the effect of alienating potential supporters, although admittedly with much less power and force than real-life interactions would.
On balance I don’t think so. Pit venting is not the only frequency being broadcast on around here, and overall people tend to learn more tolerance at the dope than many of them came in with.
Don’t worry about the “unlawful intrusion of the courts…” nonsense. This is a very small minority view which has NEVER, in over two hundred years of constitutional jurisprudence, carried the day. The courts have always seen the constitution as a set of guiding principles not graven tablets written with the finger of god. Equality under the law is one of those principles. Gender equality was specifically granted as well. As vocal and determined as strict constructionalists(or the even more vocal and borderline insane “textualists” a la Scalia) may be that doesn’t change the “facts on the ground” that principles are deliberately vague, not hard and fast boundries.
And we’re all rooting for you to learn yours, soon.
The problem I see with your actual claims in the last couple of posts is that much of the “venting” takes place in the context of personal attacks on people who are not opposed to your ultimate goals. Disagreeing with specific points of law or issues of culture makes sense. An honest argument over the issues can clarify those issues and bring to light unspoken assumptions that may need to be corrected. The current threads Civil Union This! and What are you getting out of all this, Bricker?, despite being in the Pit have provided opportunities to air those discussions. Note, however, that both have included numerous attacks on the persons beyond their arguments (as has this thread). It is all fine and well to state that one should not let personal attacks from one group blind one to the valid points that group raises, but there is a double standard being maintained in which people are allowed to launch personal attacks against one side while whining that those attacked should not take it personally and should continue to maintain their support. Or that they should take it personally and put aside their thoughts to mindlessly repeat your expressions, even if they could be right and you wrong in terms of the strategy of reaching your goals. (And note well that last point: The people being attacked are very often supporters of your cause. They may differ as to tactics or immediate objectives, but in a nation that has shown a strong tilt against your goals, deliberately offending those who “only” provide 90% or 99% support to your cause seems to be a pretty self-defeating tactic.)
(All occurrences of the word “you” following the first sentence are general and are not specific to lissener.)
Sometimes I think the original words were deliberately vague, intentionally general, so the writers would not paint themselves into a corner. They did it in order to include things that might have been forgotten or excluded if they were more specific. For instance, the words about the right to pursue happiness, say we have the right to try for it. It doesn’t say we MUST be happy it doesn’t guarantee happiness, it says we can try for it. That’s nice and general. By reading that. it can be understood that nobody can stop anyone else from trying. That is not the case in real life. If you block people from living in peace in their own way, you do exactly that. There is no “in this case but not in this other case”. Some people like Scalia want to control everything that is not specifically spelled out. That runs 180 degrees out of what the intent of those words was.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find those two different messages emanating from the same mouth. You’re making a monolith out of a rabble. I, for one, have given up for now–for the most part–on educating homophobes. Takin a break. I’m just calling them out, or whatever. That’s one voice. Others on “my” side are pleading for understanding and tolerance. Just because one “side” comprises such distinct voices doesn’t mean that individuals among us operate on a double standard; only on an individual standard.
That’s fine–but there are also voices, Elvis being a great example, who are insinuating homophobe to everyone willy-nilly. Saying that I’m a homophobe makes about as much sense as saying that I’m a Christian: it’s just nonsensical. Yet he does it, because I disagree with him on particulars of how equality ought best be achieved, and he’s incapable of realizing that people can hold decent, respectful disagreements.
