How Do You Deal with All the Gay Hate?

My advice is to never, ever let a comment that is ignorant, hateful or bigoted go unchallenged. Yes, you probably aren't going to change the mind of the person who said it...but you might. And, it is always important to remember that you and your opponent aren't the only ones reading the blogs. A lot of my comments are actually directed not at the author of the offensive comment, but to the young gay people who may be lurking in the background and reading the exchange, but who lack the experience, self-image, or force of will to defend themselves from the hateful rhetoric which is unfortunately a part of virtually any and all internet forums. They need to know that they aren't alone in this, and that it is possible to stand up to for yourself against the hate-mongers of the world.

percivale

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Check out Progressive PRIDE, a Gay-Straight Alliance for the Progressive U community.

I'm a little biased, because I am an agnostic who abhors Christianity and organized religion in general. In the past, I have dealt with their ignorance by ranting and raving, generally calling them out on their lunacy, and saying how hypocritical it is to say, "hey I want religious freedom, "under god" on my dollar bills, but it's not O.K. for other people to have marriage to the people they love because MY Bible says it's wrong."

However, this never really worked, because the really die-hard conservative Christians don't really care and aren't going to change. My new approach is not to change their attitude, but to change how they say it. Because so many write with hate-filled rhetoric, I have begun leaving message saying, "Instead of saying this... how about wording it like this, 'According to my beliefs, which are based on ____ religion, homosexuality is wrong, but I can understand there are people who aren't (insert religious affiliation) and that it's unfair to apply my personal beliefs to them.'"

I seem to get more success with this.

I'm not religious even slightly. I oppose gay marriage because I am conservative and I fear the effect of gay marriage on society.

Marriage is an important institution and is the basic building block of society. It is an institution already in a lot of trouble and I think we should not do anything worse to damage it. We should probably return to the more restrictive divorce laws that made marriage work better. People should enter marriage with a greater sense of seriousness and committment and the certain knowledge that it is a hard thing to undo, Progress is not always good and in the case of marriage it has been decidely bad. We did not used to have a problem with society having to support large numbers of single women with children..

I see this as sort of a chicken and egg scenario. I imagine that the PRACTICE of a man and woman living in a committed, enduring, monogamous (mostly) relationship was around a LONG time before anybody came up with a word for it or a ceremony or the institution of marriage

I have no problem with gays living in similar relationships and being given legal rights similar or identical to marriage called civil unions but I'd like to see some substantial history (maybe a thousand years) before I see a union between two people of the same sex as equivalent to a marriage between two people of the opposite sex. There are definately some scattered examples of gays living in these types of relationships but they have little to do with the overall gay culture as gays themselves have defined and promoted it. The push for gay marriage is a very recent thing and there is not enough history for me to risk a basic building block of society to meet a whim demanded by a tiny minority of our population. Certainly there is nothing comparable to the thousands of years of heterosexual marriage.

Conservatives are cautious about preserving and protecting the things that make society work. It is a perfectly rational position that has nothing to do with hatred, bigotry, religious zeal or ignorance.