I see you are a family man, a follower of Jesus and a heterosexual. I ask you this Where is your loyalty? You have betrayed your wife, your children, your God and your heterosexuality by taking the side of faggots.
I thought of deleting the last word because it's so vile but I decided to leave it unaltered just to show the full extent of how deeply prejudiced he is. There's more to his abusive language but the rest of it is directed at his pet hate - the LGBT community. His language is a dead giveaway. Now I know what homophobes mean when they talk about the "gay agenda". They are the ones who have the "heterosexual agenda" and anybody who does not agree with them in persecuting the LGBT community is disloyal to the heterosexual agenda. Because they obviously have a wicked agenda of hate, they naturally accuse the LGBT community of having an agenda when there really is no such thing. The desire to live one's life without being insulted, persecuted or in some places, beaten up is not an agenda. It's a basic need.
NOTE: The writer also warned me not to publish his email but since I've betrayed my wife, children, God and heterosexuality, it won't hurt to betray him too. Besides, I'm not revealing his identity or email address and I've only published a small segment of his furious email. I will protect the identity of those who write to me not only because it's the decent thing to do but also because I want to make sure I don't deter these loony people from writing to me further. As I have said before, please write in. Don't worry if your email might sound angry and insane. The loonier the better. After I posted my blog article about the hate mail I received, I received absolutely nothing for a while. But you can't contain lunacy and I've started to receive again emails expressing dissatisfaction with my stand and I certainly don't want to stop the flow.
But the email set me thinking. What makes me so upset with homophobes? As the writer says in his email, it should not concern me. I thought about it and it became clear to me that this matter should concern me and everyone else. Homophobia should be all our collective concern just as sexism and racism should be even though I'm a man and I am a part of the majority ethnic group in my country.
There was a time when left-handed children were forced to write with their right hands. It was believed that you have to change a southpaw so that he could be "normal" like the rest of us. It was then commonly accepted that southpaws were less intelligent and were more prone to violence and crime. It's true that the world is a right-handed world. I've been told that it's virtually impossible for a southpaw to use scissors. That's because scissors are designed for the right hand and if you use them on your left hand, they just won't work.Supposing there is a law against left-handedness and supposing our holy book is dead opposed to left-handedness. And we have preachers who declare that they don't hate the left-handed person; it's the sin of left-handedness that they hate and as long as the southpaw is willing to stop using his sinful left hand, we will embrace him with love and acceptance. True, he may be a little handicapped, but that's a small price to pay if you don't want to sin against the Lord and live an immoral life. And they liken left-handedness to paedophilia, bestiality, rape and murder (which is precisely what homophobes have said of homosexuality even in the comments to my various blog posts).
If you tell me that in such a scenario, you are not angry with anti-southpaws because you're right-handed and so are the rest in your family, then what does that make you out to be if not a hateful self-centred scoundrel?
/// Supposing there is a law against left-handedness and supposing our holy book is dead opposed to left-handedness. ///
ReplyDeleteI suppose there is no need to suppose - the holier-than-thou people are dead opposed to left handedness. Left-handed people were associated with evil - that's probably why "There was a time when left-handed children were forced to write with their right hands.".
In fact, in Latin, sinister is the left hand.
Some believe left-handed people are smarter; and some think they are less intelligent. But they are not sinister and they are not the devil incarnate.
Thanks for your comment. You are absolutely right about the prejudice against left-handed people. It's sad but prejudice is rampant everywhere and over the most ridiculous differences that we have. As long as someone is different from the rest of us, that's room for one more prejudice. That's the world we live in.
DeleteIt's hilarious - these hateful bigoted emails u get. And the anger your writings inspired in them! I have read so many hateful blogs and pieces about the gay community and it affects me only because I wonder what's wrong with these juvenile people and their extremely juvenile minds. Even in the letters to ST supporting the ban, these writers just don't get it; there just isn't any basis to their arguments, rationale or logic without the foundations of religious bias. And that's sad. To live a life and in a insular society with such dark coloured lens.
ReplyDeletePerhaps as a gay person these hateful remake and taunts slide off me cos I have experienced so much worse in real life. Sometimes it's a constant struggle that you get tired of. I am only happy now that there are others who understand and support people like us, people like you. A blog post may mean nothing in the larger scheme of things but for today, for now, it sparked a little light of hope in me that perhaps one day, my struggle will end. Thanks
Of course the day will come when homophobia will be universally frowned upon. It can't be otherwise. It's sure to go the way of racism and sexism. Even backward benighted countries, the last bastion of homophobia, such as Nigeria and Russia will one day have no choice but to take a stand against homophobia. Precisely when that will take place is of course uncertain.
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