Opinion of TJ in Cleve

[afleitch]

I've never liked him. Sorry.

[afleitch]

Here's the thing (and this is partly in response to Antonio's car crash post), LGBT rights; the idea that LGBT people are part of the spectrum of human experience and as such deserve rights to marry, rights to be with each other, rights to simply be is rapidly becoming a red line issue for many people who aren't LGBT. Which is a good thing. Religious gymnastics over the issue, or passive agressiveness (oh we don't think being that way is wrong, but you can't love someone, marry them or settle down with them) or pseudoacademic responses about what is 'natural' or what St Oldfart of Irrelevance said about it in 600AD just doesn't cut it anymore. Not only is the position itself deeply inhuman, but the contrived attempts to define LGBT as 'other' who can not and should not be able to share in acceptance, love, family and marriage like everyone else is disingenous, whether it comes from a robed virgin in a peaked hat or a slick suited, twice married bible clutching salesman.

The reason why this is becoming untenable is because LGBT people aren't other; they're you, or your brother, or your daughter or your best friend or your work colleague. All these people living lives, and being happy with their partner and raising kids, or nursing each other in sickness. People who have lived whole lives together and you're telling me there is 'wrongness' in this? 'sin'? 'disorder'?
If you can't see love when it dances and laughs in front of you, when it cries or coughs or dies in front of you, then you're wilfully 'shutting' something off from the human experience. It's no different from racism, which employs the same tactics; resiliently denying the validity of others based on a immutable characteristic despite knowing they are basically doing the same things with their life as you are.

Someone could be the life and soul of the party. They could be the kindest, most charitable, most reasonable person, but if they hold people of a different race either in contempt or to a lower standard, or a separate standard; telling them they can't have what they have, or if they can, it must be a different version, then they are awful people. I've known people like that and disassociated with them. The same is true of LGBT issues. It's a red line.