I know that I claim to spend less and less time over at Huffington these days (I'm such a liar) and while I actually have been trying to spend less time overall at the computer, when I'm on I tend toward reading politically-oriented blogs more than the others (except sleazy gossip sites, of course) and one of 'em just happens to be HP.
All protestations aside, I wanted to write about a recent exchange in which I became involved on Huffington-in the entertainment page of all places.
See me below the fold for a detailed description:
It was all over a little gossip item about this attractive couple making a red carpet appearance:
That would be Jesse Tyler Ferguson, one of the stars of the hit ABC sitcom, "Modern Family" making a red carpet appearance with his current squeeze Justin Mikita. A perfectly sweet moment that is becoming less and less an issue in the 21st century-or so I thought.
As I scrolled down to the comments expecting to read a lot of "oh how cutes" and "what a nice couple" sentiments, the one at the very top of the list stood out at me:
"The best comment is a NO COMMENT."
Immediately rankled I came back with:
"and yet you had to go and make a bigoted remark anyhow."
If you want to look at the entire thread you can check it out here but I would prefer to skip the minutiae and get to the meat of the matter-that it's ok to disapprove of gay people and still not be a bigot.
At least according to one respondent who wrote:
Alguien's comment that xxxxxxx is a bigot because he doesn't care for gay couples. That is just ludicrous ... and unfortunate ... yet standard practices for liberals here on HP. I disagree therefore I am a bigot. Sad.
and then followed up with this gem:
Liberals take a disagreeing tone or comment and twist to an agenda. Disagreeing with the gay lifestyle is not bigoted. Calling them "homos' is. Maybe you should educate yourself ... instead of being part of the polarized problem.
So there you have it. It's ok to dislike them, it only becomes bigotry when you start calling them names. And that, fellow Kossacks, is the very crux of the problem. You see, as long as you only BELIEVE that gay people are bad, it's ok.
I suppose this is the very sentiment that carries over into NOM's protestations of not being against gays-that it's not bigotry because they just want marriage to be a private, straights-only club, they still "like" gays, y'know, funny characters on TV, and that guy who made the drapes in the livingroom, etc., etc., but only as long as gay people remain in their appropriate roles (i.e., not getting married).
It's a little frightening to know that there are a lot of people who can justify their prejudices by parsing like that. We've seen a lot of screaming from the right about how they're justified for expressing thoroughly ugly opinions lately (Bill O'Reilly and Nazism, the birther movement and Rush Limbaugh's extremely offensive Chinese gibberish routine immediately come to mind)and yet, for some reason WE get called intolerant for telling them that behavior like that is hurtful to a lot of people.
It would seem to me, that being intolerant of hurtful behavior is a good kind of intolerance to cultivate.
Keep at it folks.