There is an excellent post over at The Stranger by Dan Savage. A listener to his radio show wrote him complaining of the way he placed responsibility on bigots for what happened to Tyler Clementi.
As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man that took his own life after being humiliated by people who should have known better. I think you need to be aware of your own prejuduces and how they might play into your thinking. At best I think your comments were hypocritical.
If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preferance, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)?
I’ll get to Savage’s response in a second, but he didn’t directly address the listener’s question, so I want to tackle that first.
What is the difference between judging a group based on sexual orientation and judging a group based on any other reason? That question is a non-starter since it’s so incoherent, but the listener does give the specific example of faith. So how is that different? This isn’t that hard. Even though people probably adhere to the same religion as their parents, people do have a choice in their religion. They do choose to have faith, the idea that belief without evidence is a virtue. They choose to base their lives on certain doctrine and dogma. Sexual orientation, on the other hand, is entirely different. That same level of choosing simply does not exist. I can choose to be gay no more than a gay woman can choose to prefer men.
But I like Savage’s response better:
I’m sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.
No, wait. I’m not. Gay kids are dying. So let’s try to keep things in perspective: fuck your feelings.
…
Being told that they’re sinful and that their love offends God, and being told that their relationships are unworthy of the civil right that is marriage (not the religious rite that some people use to solemnize their civil marriages), can eat away at the souls of gay kids. It makes them feel like they’re not valued, that their lives are not worth living. And if one of your children is unlucky enough to be gay, the anti-gay bigotry you espouse makes them doubt that their parents truly love them—to say nothing of the gentle “savior” they’ve heard so much about, a gentle and loving father who will condemn them to hell for the sin of falling in love with the wrong person.
I wish we could see a lot more of this in the political realm. Of course, that would require honesty.
Filed under: Rights | Tagged: Dan Savage, Gays, Tyler Clementi |
For the Sake of Science 
Savage’s response to the bigotry is perfect.
Perhaps you can point out the bigotry in that womans comment? I want quotes, not some nonsense.
I said before that Tyler alone is responsible for his actions and he took his life. The people that videotaped him are guilty of nothing more than being idiots, recording someone without their knowledge is illegal.
Micheal, you yourself said that this did not appear to be a crime driven by the fact he was gay and I agree. Is there evidence of taunts or other harassment after the video was aired?
I ask that honestly, I haven’t read that there were, but I also haven’t given a search for stories my utmost attention.
I called her a bigot because of the basis for her beliefs. She’s against same-sex marriage and believes we ought to judge people based upon sexual orientation.
I’ve since heard conflicting information about the motivation behind the video taping, so I’m not sure what the case actually is. But it could be that his roommates had no idea he was gay (I believe they live-streamed) and it wouldn’t matter because I haven’t especially been concerned with the specific crime of invasion of privacy in anything I’ve written. This is about how our society forces gays to feel other-ly for no reason but hate.
I only mention the crime because its a fairly low key crime.
A bigot being someone who “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices” I’d say a lot of atheists fall into that category as well and would happily build a world as intolerant of religious persons as the world is portrayed against gays.
As usual, Nate redefines words to fit his own prejudices and is completely out of sync with the rest of this world.
Here is the rest of the definition:
A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs. The predominant usage in modern American English refers to persons hostile to those of differing race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, various mental disorders, or religion.
I would say Nate is bigoted against atheists. Irrationality is a key component to this and he exhibits it.
I didn’t cut out anything essential. Everything following especially doesn’t really matter to the definition.
One of the problems I have with the word in general you would be hard pressed to find someone who is not, by definition, a bigot.
What did I “redefine” exactly?
I despise the dictionary definition of this word. It allows for its application to anyone who displays a high degree of certainty in opinion. That makes every single human a bigot.
It’s such a useless definition.