Note: this is going up a lot later than I had hoped, since my article just now got posted
Over at The Huffington Post, I've written a follow-up [and you should definitely read it] to the story I called attention to over here a couple days ago; there, it was discussed that Tennessee state senator Stacey Campfield recently scribbled down a few sad and indignant paragraphs on his blog after humanitarian and utterly awesome restaurant-owner Martha Boggs asked him to eat elsewhere (her business is doing very well after her heroic actions.) In his literary masterwork, he offered us insight into his ideas about oppression and the Civil Rights Movement, informing us readers that he guesses "some people still support segregation" and that the treatment he was subjected to violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I know what you're thinking. But... wait.
Maybe he's onto something here:
Given the long history of civil rights violations against that unpopular minority (including, but not limited to, the destruction of their First Amendment rights on a staggering level), the intense, state-sanctioned campaign of violence and terrorism waged against this innocent minority relentlessly for over a century, and the systematic separation of these human beings from the rest of civilization through our laws and institutions, it was inevitable that someone would eventually take up this fight for the reinstatement of their civil rights.
So I'm going to help him out. I've created a Facebook page, Sit-ins for Stacey, where I've let my Huffington Post readers know there will be lots of action today. I hope you'll all join my effort to help him fight his oppression. Once you've joined, tell all your friends. Get them to tell their friends. As I say to my readers:
I feel your pain. I just want you to know I consider your plight to be the civil rights fight of my generation. There is nothing more important to me right now. Progress in this country depends on defending the rights of the least among us, and I think we all know who fits into that category best.
Because the struggles of white heterosexual Christian men are the struggles of America. If we can't help those who are clearly the worst off, those who can't even go to the first place at which they would prefer to have dinner, then who can we help? If we can't feel empathy for someone who, like any average American, doesn't see gay kids ever get subjected to bullying and thinks the idea that gay kids are bullied is a ridiculous prank played on Americans, then for whom can we feel empathy?
So, I stand with Campfield.
Or whatever.
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In all seriousness, please do read the article and pass it around as much as you can and please "Like" my Facebook page and let people know about it. I'll be posting updates to the page's Wall all day, adding links to civil rights organizations and charities in order to direct people toward fighting actual civil rights violations. I don't usually do gimmicks, but this was too much of an opportunity for me to pass up, and I think that we can all promote state (Tennessee or otherwise) and national organizations that validly address real civil rights violations, real voting rights suppression, real HIV/AIDS assistance and research, et cetera.
This guy wants to whine in blog posts about his own problems. We can show that there's a world out there beyond his own mind.