29 March 2008

[zeitgeist, or_politik] I Do Not Fear Teh Gay

1454. I grow weary of the ongoing demand of certain elements of our culture to despise gay people. And I've gone through a whole range of emotions as, time after time after tedious time we are demanded to go to the polls and vote on it.


Look, good peoples, I know that some of you are utterly utterly convinced that letting gays be and letting them have those civil unions are somehow going to undermine the fabric of society as we know it and are just as utterly obsessed with preventing it from happening, regardless of how much hurt, pain, and misery it inflicts on others. And to some of you, this problem is so important that you fixate upon it to the exclusion of all else, especially things that are actually problems that are currently threatening us.


I mean, you'd think if a rogue planet was bearing down on the earth and was going to smash us into oblivion tomorrow, you wouldn't help out with the evacuation because you just have to make sure that teh gay can't get married first.


Like I said, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not getting it. But I don't see preventing civil unions (or, yes, even marriages) between gay people to be the defining crisis of our time.


Moreover, preventing people from forming mutually supportive unions isn't doing anything but doing harm to them. It is breaking up their family units, causing upheaval in their lives. We actually shouldn't have the right to tell other people what to do this way. It amuses me (in the wrong way) that we actually give ourselves the right.


But then, it's a mean time, not a gentle one.


And those in this world who just can't be happy knowing that somewhere, somehow, gay people are living happy lives and not bothering anyone and being good to each other and their neighbors just because they're gay. And they'll wave their arms and work like hell to prove that this cruelty is justified and good.


Well, I'm not with you. Just like all the other times you've demanded I answer this question, I'll say no to you.


Of course, the re-re-re-requestioning may pass. But before we start trundling out The Will of the Voter, remember, just because something won an election doesn't transform it from a bad idea to a good idea.


If you want to be afraid of teh Gay, well, good luck with that. Here's a therapy you might try though; close your eyes, breath deeply, go to your Happy Place, and say to yourself, over and over It's not about me. It's not about me. It's not about me ... .


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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

i just get tired of people telling me i have to think a certain way about this thing or some other thing. (pril)

Samuel John Klein said...

That's what it gets down to, isn't it? Or at the least, the choice between accepting the persecute-the-gay groupthink, or shutting up, sitting down, and liking it (what I call the Larry George option).

Good point. Good point.

Dale said...

Sometimes I just default to the explanation that all the anti-gay people are just afraid their own inner gay person will come bursting out offering fashion tips and dishing on Barbara Streisand. But that's probably only about 90% of it. The rest are simply small-minded.

I don't get it. I can't relate. They are causing real pain and I wish they would stop.

Samuel John Klein said...

Dale:

I think we're in the same place on one point: your comment displays something I've noted over and over, that a lot of the people who are the most vocal about being frightened by gays–at least the ones in power and in the news–over and over seem to have their own longings in that direction and loath themselves for it.

In order to remove the temptation, they turn it outward and try to eliminate it from public life. Maybe they think on some level that by going on crusade about it they'll cauterize it out of their own selves, who knows?

I can't relate either. On those few times I do stare into the abyss, I run up against this wall and can't get past it (Ha! Mixed metaphor!) But there are people who have no problem making these things into one harmonious weltanschauung. And I'm supposed to be the weird on here?

Another thing me and The Wife™ discuss endlessly is why is it so much of what powerful people do and how they act is driven by whether or not their gettin' any, with who, and how.

Apparently the object of power isn't lifting the world up, improving it, or even just remaking it in whatever image you want. The object of power is unlimited nookie.

I don't get it either.

pril said...

I'm not tired about being told how to think about just the gay thing. It's about *everything* -having some clown look down their nose at me because I think Prius' are the damned ugliest cars on the planet and this reason alone would keep me from ever owning one (and this from a Toyota fanatic, ok..) and buzz-killers and fun-wreckers who believe that if they don't enjoy or approve of something that NO ONE ELSE should be able to enjoy it either. I'm sick of people peeping into what we do in our private time, fed up with "it's for the children", not listening any more to "You should/shouldn't eat/drink/buy/consume/listen/watch/drive/draw/
play/patronize that". I'm an individual, I'm one person, I'm not interested in the zeitgeist or the collective, and all the people running for president are meet the new boss same as the old boss and now i'm rambling but you get my point, probably. I am tired, in the literal sense of the word, of seeing the individual stomped on in favor of prevailing sociopolitical thought, I guess.

more on topic, probably, i like gay people and believe they should have all the bells and whistles that the rest of us take for granted, like marriage, and i really don't understand what the big furor is over it, still. Mean-spiritedness? I mean, is that what it comes down to? I'd say ignorance but I see the anti-gay thing coming from a lot of educated people, which just goes to prove that college means nothing.

well, hell, Mr Vielen Katzen, you read my thingie. You know how I am. lol

Samuel John Klein said...

Yow!

I think your theology and my theology, as a certain character in a favorite book once said, are the same theology.

They are people who are scared of everything and perhaps also scared of something that they think lives within themselves and just know the way to protect themselves is to control and regulate it out of existence. And if that fight harms people ... oh, well, it's the will of [deity].

As far as the zeitgeist, I take an aloof view myself. I view it as something that could perhaps be used (it's only fair, if it's going to be shoved in my face 24/7/365). On the one hand, I've acknowledged that it's something I feel I must live with. On the other hand, I resent the implication that I'm nothing if I'm not following someone, seeing as being a follower never got me any farther than being a free agent, anyway.

And I completely agree with you about the Prius. Butt ugly! All that cutting edge stuff ... and it looks like a box. Bleagh!

You:
I'd say ignorance but I see the anti-gay thing coming from a lot of educated people, which just goes to prove that college means nothing

There are brilliant scientists that are unforgivable crackpots. True.

You:
well, hell, Mr Vielen Katzen, you read my thingie. You know how I am. lol

Yep, I read your thingie. It kicked my ass. I love it when that happens. That's how you roll, yo.