Thursday, December 18, 2008

A new challenge to the lgbt community - analyze the war against lgbts

I've noticed that in the Obama/Warren controversy, folks have been making comparisons between inviting Rick Warren and inviting a known racist like David Duke:

You wouldn't give David Duke a prominent place at the inaguration. Also if Warren maligned any other group like he maligned gays, we wouldn't be having this conversation about "having a dialogue."

Those who press this argument do have a point. But the devil is in the details.

People are throwing around the word "homophobic" to describe Warren but what they don't understand is that the word "homophobic" does not have the same power as the words "Anti-Semite" or "racist."

With the words "racist" and "Anti-Semite" comes the history of lynchings, cross burnings, the Holocaust and various other acts of violence.

But before you point out the case of Lawrence King, Matthew Shepard, and others who have suffered homophobic violence, remember one thing.

The racists and the Anti-Semites don't have people like Tony Perkins or James Dobson invited on news programs to give their positions.

And not matter how ugly anti-gay violence is, people like Perkins and Dobson are able to distance themselves from these acts. With a calm visage and a smiling face, they are able to bat down the word "homophobic" as a term that gays use to bash Christians.

This speaks as to how insidious the war against lgbts actually is. For the most part, the weapons are not sticks, knives, and guns, but carefully worded rhetoric and soundbites that have been practiced consistently in meeting rooms until they have the semblance of sounding unthreatening.

So the question is how do we combat this without looking like raging dogs.