A football player, a protest, an outrage and now I may have lost my best friend of more than a decade.
Colin Kaepernick’s decision to not stand for the national anthem seem to finally be the national tragedy that got my best friend to get over his “I don’t talk politics on social media” rule.
It all started with this meme he (a former Bernie voter) shared from Rush Limbaugh’s page:
One of our mutual friends stepped in to ask if that rule also applies to LGBT community, and whether or not someone like Caitlyn Jenner or Laverne Cox have a right to protest treatment of transgender individuals because they have millions and their transgendered status does not hurt their ability to “make it.”
My best friend’s answer was simple- “LGBT people are still being oppressed (see: bathroom laws, legal to fire a LGBT person) and black people are not.” Because Civil Rights happened.
I chimed in, being gay myself, and explain that even though I live in New York State, where there are literally NO anti-LGBT laws on the book, I still sometimes feel oppressed, most notably a few months ago when I hugged my partner in public and someone yelled “die faggots.”
I said this:
By definition, oppression is "cruel and unjust treatment." It doesnt necessarily need to be through a law or action by government. In that moment, we were treated cruel and unjustly. We were being oppressed. New York State allows us to marry, adopt children, even makes it illegal to fire us for being LGBT, and yet someone yelled "die faggots" at us here; ergo we will be oppressed until society eradicates that type of behavior. We will have to consider things like; do we want to get married outside in case someone decides to yell "die faggots" at us at our happiest moment? Can we hug in public if we go to South Carolina to see his mom because everyone's so conservative down there? That's a form of oppression. Civil Rights laws also can't stop a cop from saying "blacks are violent people," after literally yanking a schoolteacher out of her car and body slamming her after pulling her over for a speeding ticket, ergo as long as we continue to be ok with that happening, and not do anything about it, and excuse it as just a bad apple, blacks are still being oppressed, even if it isn't through an actual law.
He insisted to me that “unfortunately, we will never get rid of ignorance” and that “not standing for the national anthem is equally as ignorant as saying ‘die faggot.’”
This upset me so much, it actually surprised me. My stomach turned and for a moment, I felt less of a person.
I explained to him it isn’t because...
It wasn't just disrespectful for someone to say "die faggot," it was BEYOND disrespectful. It was dehumanizing. Do you fear for your life because someone didn't stand for the national anthem? Do you fear for your loved one's life? Are you afraid because of it? Is anyone? No, so it's not the same thing. Colin Kaepernick is not pulling a flag down. He's not stopping it from flying or stopping the national anthem from playing. He's simply joining everyone else in standing for it. No one's rights are being violated. No one is being threatened, no one is being made to feel less safe or less equal or less human.
He said “Sorry, but it’s my opinion that it is. People died for the flag.”
At one point he said it’s equally as offensive because “when that guy called you a faggot, no one actually died, but people died for the flag.”
I was shocked, because it was totally unlike him to say something like that. (I dare say his opinions are being negatively influenced by his baseball friends, who are all NYPD cops). It ended with him scolding me for trying to “make his opinion seem negative” and me reiterating “disrespectful is too lenient of a word for someone yelling ‘die faggot’ at a gay couple”
And now I don’t think how to repair that friendship. My partner, who was gay-bashed as a teenager in South Carolina, doesn’t ever want to talk to him again, and he was to be best man at our wedding.
I don’t know what to do about it.