Wait. I don't. Look, this is the reality we're confronted with, anymore. Alec Baldwin talks homophobic shit about a pap and loses out on his MSNBC gig. Martin Bashir talks shit about Sarah Palin and blows his gig. Tons of employees all over the globe have certain contracts regarding their conduct or compliance with standards of performance in their personal lives. Sometimes these standards have a direct impact on their effectiveness in their positions. If the impression that Eich's support of Proposition 8, which may have impacted his employees in Silicon Valley effects the market choices of the exact computing market Mozilla/Firefox want to capture--that's a business decision. People have a right to an absence of government opression for their free speech (although dudes in helmets wielding tear gas and pepper spray sometimes do make their presence known in spaces where people with particularly radical ideas can congregate--so let's not pretend that never happens--and also let's not pretend the equivalent is happening to CEO's of multi-million dollar corporations either, 'kay?)
I laugh at boycotts like those of the Million Moms over whatever their momentary outrage of the minute is because it's just puffery. You know, I don't think The Simpsons, Married With Children or The Family Guy, were ever particularly hurt by that kind of boycott, and I love like the devil loves suntan lamps the response of Honeymaid to their haters over their gay-positive ad. I think the Million Moms, who aren't either representative of even a million people or all Moms, have every right to stick it to Covergirl for having Ellen or Queen Latifa as their spokeswomen.
They just won't be effective. Because it turns out, we love Ellen and Queen Latifa. We love Modern Family and Glee. We love our Adam Lambert and Clay Aiken. We aren't hateful of our fellow humans and respect their right to find and keep the love of their life if they are straight, gay, or what the hey.
So, you know what's been happening lately? When Chick-fil-A has to dial back the anti-gay and Duck Dynasty loses ratings?
Progress. I would call it progress. And that is why I kind of do have faith in democracy.
But I really do feel sorry for people who feel like they have to perform a lie to comply with the standards that society sets because they are a minority struggling against the opinions of a hostile majority. Which is why I do not quite have the sympathy for anti-gay Christians as they might think I'd have. Where would we have learned how to shun you all? Maybe by watching you? Think about how that works, and get on back to us.
4 comments:
I like to think the arc of history does actually bend towards justice....Progress. I would call it progress. And that is why I kind of do have faith in democracy.
I feel that the opposite is happening.
Our Democratic Administration let the Bush-Cheney torturers go, and went after whistle-blowers, instead. And the abuses continue.
For all that Obama talks about income inequality, it's grown worse. And given the neoliberals he's picked for his Administration, and the policies they've pursued, it is no surprise.
And it looks like we're going to get the same choice in 2016...the 'lesser evil' neoliberal, or whatever horrid idiot the goopers come up with.
Good cop/bad cop. Vote for the good cop, and you'll get some relief on the culture wars front. But you're still going to get sold out relentlessly to 'our' multinational corporations.
Nor do I see Obama (or Hillary) doing what has to be done in the area of climate change. Just enough to be better than the goopers isn't nearly good enough.
~
Hi Vixen,
I wonder if you have perused this latest piece by Andrew Sullivan:
DailyDish post
It reminds me a little of an article I read the other day written by a gay Brit. He was angry with Cameron because he believes Cameron is pandering to the gay community by advancing the idea of gay marriage.
His contention was that Cameron had the power to offer gay unions a lot of additional benefits and opportunities which literally would have helped. However, he saw pushing marriage as simply a way to get the opposition to gays galvanized and antagonized, creating pushback.
If you have read Andrew Sullivan's opinion, you begin to see the depth of progressive intolerance. The left is beginning to get a reputation for doctrinaire intolerance. I certainly have seen it, and a lot of people are starting to see it. Everything is "hate" this and "homophobic" that, and everyone who is not on board with the hard agenda is singled out for name-calling, ridicule, scorn...
This may work up to a point, but eventually people notice the level of negativity and start realizing that the intolerance has become pretty grave.
You have to remember that the group primarily singled out to attack are baby boomers, and basically we are not the WWII generation. We are the civil rights generation. We are the ones you see in those old movies occupying university offices, huge marches in protest, etc., etc. We invented this stuff.
--Formerly Amherst
Actually--reading Sullivan doesn't give me any indication of the depth of the Left's ugliness because Sullivan is not truly a sympathizer to what the Left stands for. Look at his history--the embrace of Charles Murray, the weird sympathy to Ron & Rand Paul, the ambivalence regarding the existence of hate crimes laws: he seems to have a hang-up against codification into law measures aimed at equality because they acknowlege special groups to exist, even though these laws have to acknowledge the groups to exist in theory to address the discrimination actually happening in practice. In other words--because he has enough personal privilege to not face a daily struggle with identity politics and its direct effect on himself, he can ignore the ways it impacts others. Cheers, to him.
I don't despise Baby Boomers--my parents are Boomers. This isn't a generational fight. Lots of the same-sex couples you can see signing up for marriage licenses are people who've been in 20-30 year relationships who want the benefits that marriage confers--they aren't millenials. Stonewall wasn't my generation. Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin weren't even Boomers. I wouldn't denigrate the work of people who came before regarding civil rights, but I'm opposed to thinking it's finished. And agreeing with someone on one topic doesn't mean they get a pass from criticism where it might be due.
Also--who is ugly?
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2014/04/ben-shapiro-we-are-using-lefts-own.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
U-G-L-Y.
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