A Matter of Respect
I’m tired. Tired of being told to respect differences of opinion.
This week I watched from afar as someone I don’t know ~ a friend of many friends ~ sounded off on FB regarding what marriage is and isn’t. This person, who spent a lifetime in the theatre, riffed on religion, God and Jesus; ranted about bloodlines and how nothing other than one man, one woman marriage would ever be “real” marriage. While infuriating, her tantrum wasn’t interesting or creative enough to have brought anything new to the table. Her posts merely exposed her ability to regurgitate the same bullshit we’ve come to expect from those who are suddenly more concerned with penises fitting into vaginas than with the fact that it will take the gays generations to destroy the institution of marriage with quite the same panache that heterosexuals have been employing for decades.
Beyond the message, the tone of her posts is angry, confrontational and abrasive. Lots of yelling and virtual foot stomping, signified by CAPS and multiple exclamation points!!!!! This was met head on by angry, confrontational and abrasive responses. Visceral responses from people who believe in equality and who, at some point, were friends with this person. (Funny, gay equality didn’t seem so evil when we were directing, choreographing, dressing, painting and otherwise worshiping her during her career. I guess in her mind our place is to fabulous up the straight world while living our own lives out of sight and in the dark. We’re the lipstick-on-the-teeth checking, glitter tossing, hair fixing, “Get it, girl” screaming help. Pay no attention to the faggots behind the act curtain. But I digress.)
What struck me about these posts wasn’t her hatred or her anger ~ indeed, the gays, for reasons still not fully clear to me, bring out the anger in a lot of people ~ nor even the apparent about face from her time in the theatre. (Although there was much discussion that it wasn’t her posting at all ~ that she had been hacked or was just plain having a spectacular public nervous breakdown. I don’t know her at all but looking at her posts either seems entirely likely.) No, what struck me was the manner in which her more ardent defenders came to her rescue. No one agreed with her or said she was right, but many declared her right to an opinion and scolded those who were rude to her. They demanded that her opinions be considered valid and that she be treated with respect. That is, after all, what America is all about, no? Aren’t we a nation that thrives on our differences?
Yes. Yes we are. In America, we can’t be arrested or fined for our opinions, no matter how moronic or harmful. That doesn’t mean, however, that all opinions are created equal. Some opinions are based on a heaping pile of piping hot bullshit and should be treated as such. And I have to wonder why it should be expected that we be civil and respectful towards those who are neither civil nor respectful towards us. Bring me one logical, plausible argument against LGBT equality and I’ll listen to you. Just one. But there aren’t any. I’ve never heard one that even comes close to carrying any weight. In fact, I’ve yet to find an anti-gay argument that can’t be dismantled in one or two tweets ~ hardly enough space for an actual debate. All there is is deep seated anger and fear, misinformation handed down from generation to generation and a willful, joyous embrace of bigotry dressed up as a First Amendment right. How much respect does the KKK deserve for their opinions? Or Phyllis Schlafly, whose entire career is, remarkably, based on telling women they shouldn’t have careers? Some opinions have been recognized as not being worth spit. They have been jettisoned by the media and all intelligent people. We have not yet gotten that far with LGBT bigotry. Our work will not be complete until those who oppose us are recognized as not deserving the respect of a national discussion ~ not deserving any acknowledgment for their misguided opinion.
And frankly, if gay people respond to attacks on our civil liberties and very lives without much grace, we’re entitled. Every single one of us has a coming out story. Every single one of us has had to wade through all the crap that was taught to us about ourselves. Every single one of us knows what could happen if we hit on the wrong person. Every one of us is painfully aware of the cost of being “obvious” ~ of holding hands with our date, spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, trick or even platonic friend ~ in the wrong place. Every gay American still lives in a country where to be married is to face a series of convoluted, contradictory laws based upon zip code that leave us petrified about the prospect of being without access to spousal benefits and protections at a time when we need them the most. Every one of us lives our lives in a world that is still hostile towards the very fact of our existence. So you’ll pardon us if we don’t treat those who hate us with respect. When you demean us, attempt to disqualify our relationships, treat us as second-class citizens, tell us to consider ourselves lucky that our our government isn’t killing us as they do in other places (give you all five minutes in power and I wonder), you don’t deserve respect. You’ll pardon us if we throw a few choice words towards those who would rather see us dead than equal. You’ll pardon us if we stand up and say, “There is nothing wrong with me. Nothing lesser about me. And your opinion to the contrary isn’t merely different, it is a window into the breadth of your sweeping stupidity.” You’ll pardon us if we don’t treat with respect any person or opinion that is the basis for a world in which we must live in fear.
You call it a difference of opinion. We call it life.
UPDATE: According to the FB page of the person who inspired this post, the hate was the work of a hacker. I take back all of the snarky things I said about her ~ but I’m leaving them up just in case it wasn’t a hacker. Also, because I find snarky entertaining. Honestly, I don’t know her and I don’t know her story. I just used her as a jumping off point, because I do know this: Gay people are told to respect disgusting opinions all the time, and we shouldn’t, because not all opinions deserve respect.
