So, on to the essay I found on Facebook, and which, because I found it there, it's more or less "public domain" material, and I like it any way, plus, this guy hits the nail on the head.
Why I hate the gay agenda.
(author unknown because some dipstick forgot to give attribution, or maybe he kept it anonymous. Do you think I'm being harsh by saying "dipstick"? Well, what if you'd written something this good and weren't given credit for it? So, let the true author come forth, as has happened on my blog in the past. That was awesome, by the way.)
Let me start by saying I don't hate gay people, I'm not particularly religious, so none of that has anything to do with my stance. But I do feel there is a "gay agenda," to push social acceptance of homosexuality in media and academia. And it bothers me. It doesn't obsess me and its not something I think about night and day, but it annoys me. The easiest way to explain why, I feel, is through analogy. Think of the following as a kind of analogical thought experiment, if you will.
Imagine that gradually you start to hear an inordinate amount in the media about people who keep porcupines as pets instead of the more usual cats, dogs, etc. You might think, "huh, that's weird," but you'd probably shrug and go about your business. Live and let live, right? I mean, ultimately, who cares?
But the topic keeps cropping up in strange ways, and with increasing (and inexplicable) frequency. You start to notice that on your favorite TV shows and movies, more and more people are shown with pet porcupines, and these pet owners are always fawned over as a discriminated-against minority. Every movie now has a porcupine-owner who is a caring, sensitive, wise person misunderstood by the mean, jeering, hateful cat or dog owners. Cat and dog owners, meanwhile, are increasingly shown as backwards rednecks or intolerant haters. There is always the implication that cat and dog owners are secretly jealous of the porcupine owners, but are too backwards and riddled with hate to admit their own repressed desires to own porcupines. You start to get tired of the way this plot device is unnaturally inserted everywhere, usually off-key with the rest of the movie.
You start to notice something else weird: Novels and even children's books are being written (and in some cases re-written) to include porcupines. Your beloved childhood favorite "Clifford the Big Red Dog" becomes "Clifford the Big Red Dog and His Buddy Maurice the Porcupine."
You attend a college literary course and hope to learn about the great masterpieces of Western literature. In one course on Charles Dickens, the prof spends the whole time bashing Dickens as an evil hater because one of his books has a minor negative reference to a porcupine. You think "who cares?," and mention in class that you really like the book "Oliver Twist,"so Dickens can't be all bad. Suddenly the prof is giving you the hairy eyeball and everyone is accusing you of "hate." You receive a failing grade for the class.
Then you go to your art history class, hoping to learn about DaVinci's masterful use of line and shadow in his paintings. Instead, the professor spends the whole class talking about how DaVinci secretly kept a pet porcupine, despite the disapproval of his backwards society, and this inner struggle was the source of his sensitivity and genius as an artist.
You read in the paper that your town is spending a lot of tax money replacing a sign showing a man walking a dog at the public park because it might offend porcupine owners. The new sign shows a sillohoute of a man with his porcupine on a leash. When a a car runs over a porcupine in your town one day, it's given blaring front-page headlines and sobbing local well-wishers hold a candlelight vigil. When the same thing happens to your neighbor's cat a week later, however, nobody but the owner seems to care.
When you tell strangers you have a pet dog, you find yourself compelled to add "...of course, there's nothing wrong with owning porcupines too." You start to feel that if you don't say this when you mention your dog, people might think you are a hater, and you might even lose your job. If you forget to add the little politically correct disclaimer, people scowl at you, call you a hick and a redneck and a repressed soul who bought a dog because he was too afraid to get the porcupine he really wants, deep down inside. You are annoyed at the way you are constantly having to monitor yourself and your language use. It's not that you have anything particularly negative to say about porcupines, but the need to monitor yourself verbally all the time adds stress and annoyance to your life. For example, it's no longer acceptable to say "it's raining cats and dogs." Now you have to say, "it's raining cats, dogs, and porcupines." Otherwise people will think you are bigoted and insensitive. You find yourself spending extra effort remembering little things like this whereas before you would have spoken more naturally.
Being a little peeved by all this, you go online to your favorite Internet community to let off steam anonymously about the porcupine agenda. Some people are sympathetic, but you can't believe the amount of vitriol your mild disapproval generates. Comments include "Why are you so afraid of porcupines?" and "Come on man, just admit you really want to own a porcupine instead of a dog. It's ok, you can tell us." You try to patiently explain that's not it at all, but this is just taken as further evidence of your sad and retrogressive state of denial.
And so on. And on. And on.
This is why so many people are sick and tired of the "gay agenda." For many of us, (aside from the religious fundies, I guess) it has nothing to do with the actual fact of gayness. Instead it's the feeling of being manipulated incessantly.
I hope this makes sense to some of you, at least. For the rest of you, let the irrelevant and predictable comments abou "hate" and "being in the closet" begin...
No comments:
Post a Comment