Backlash to Prop 8
Rod Dreher, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, links to a YouTube video of a clash between Christians and gays in California. He headlines his blog item, "Gay mob assaults peaceful Christians."
The video doesn't show what I assume was a Christian protest against gays. It does show the gay counter-protest, which should be condemned for its verbal intimidation. From Rod Dreher's account of it, I expected to see physical violence, but saw none in this video.
Reader "Bill Marvel" laments that "there are unmistakable signs that the bond of mutual tolerance necessary to hold a democracy together is unraveling."
I don't see it that way. I liken it to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. African-Americans had been suppressed for centuries. Clashes were limited not out of mutual tolerance but through the tyranny of the majority. Finally, blacks announced that they weren't going to take it any more. Great good can come when patience finally runs out and a people demands justice. Within the lifetimes of those civil rights pioneers, our nation elected an African-American as president.
I know there are flaws in comparing the African-American experience with the gay experience in America. But in this one way, at least, they are similar. Gays' patience is running out and they are indicating that they are not going to take it anymore. In the 1960s anger boiled over into race riots. Gays don't have the numbers to trigger the same level of violence today, but I am not surprised to see a video showing gays verbally intimidating Christians who come into their neighborhood and threaten gays with eternal hellfire just for being who their are.
Dreher sees it just the opposite. In his morality play, he likens the anti-gay Christians to the non-violent followers of Martin Luther King. And the provoked gays to the Alabama police who used fire hoses and police dogs against the protest marchers. He wants to see this simply as a case of intolerance of the free speech rights of the Christians. He ignores the real issue: the denial of civil rights to gays, just as the real issue 40 years ago wasn't the right of peaceful assembly by blacks, but the denial of a whole host of civil rights to African-Americans. When two sides can't even agree on what the issue is, don't expect them to agree on a solution anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment