Well, let me tell you how is sexual orientation different from believing in Santa Claus, and why tolerance has nothing to do with it.
The thing is...
Being gay, Syrian, black, trans, etc. are things that you are.
Being a Christian is something you do. You get tought religion. You go to church. You recite prayers. You read a specific book and decide to believe in its content despite the facts not supporting it.
Your religion is an idea. And ideas can be challenged.
Tolerance, in the meaning they meant, is about people’s identities. About their very existence. About their human rights.
Mythologies, and this might surprise you, are not humans.
And yes, religious freedom is one of the human rights, but it means that others cannot forbid you to believe and practice your relgion, and that they can’t discriminate you based on your beliefs. It doesn’t mean that your unscientific beliefs or specific practices are protected from any criticism.
Just because I disagree with you, doesn’t mean I’m intolerant 🤷🏼
P.S. “Tolerance” means “putting up with something, despite disagreeing with it”. So me openly disagreeing with theism, while respecting people’s right to believe in it, is pretty much tolerant by definition.
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The analogy holds: both homophobia and racism are basically taking one harmless quality of a person (be it skin colour or sexual orientation) and using it to divide the population into the privileged and the discriminated group.
There’s only two differences:
One: people can hide their sexual orientation and gender identity in order to partially avoid the discrimination – people of colour generally don’t have such option.
And second: while racism is almost universally considered evil and shameful, homophobia is sometimes regarded just an “opinion”.
So, when you call out their anti-LGBTQ bigotry as being not that different from racism, they understand how insulting a racist label is, yet they cannot find any explanation to why they are any different from one.
They aren’t. And maybe this comparison will make them understand.
]]>– Morning! How was your weekend?
– Morning! Well, we went do Poland to visit my boyfriend’s family and we...
– Oh, so you have a boyfriend? That’s ok. You know, I have gay friends.
– Erm... OK... So what? I have gay friends too. And straight friends... What’s your point?
Saying “I have gay friends” might seem like a good way to show someone that you’re okay with them being gay. In reality, it mostly just shows that you’re desperately trying to show off your tolerance. It shows that you treat homosexuality as something strange, but tolerable.
But you know what kind of support do LGBTQ people really need? We just want to be treated like everyone else – that’s it. Try replacing “boyfriend” with “girlfriend” in the dialogue above. You might be surprised (”Oh, I thought you were single!”), you might get interested in the other person’s relationship (”How did you two meet?”), you might just talk abobut the actual subject of the conversation (”Cool, did you have fun on your trip?”) – but you wouldn’t comment on the other person’s heterosexuality, right?
It’s that simple – we’re just people, with similar passions, similar problems, similar relationships and the same need for love.
One day we won’t have to “come out of the closet”. We’ll just say we are in love and that will be all that matters – Ellen Degeneres
After my wedding, I’m proud to say, I realised I’d finally reached the point where coming out is not an issue anymore. I won’t ever come out again. Not that I ever did that movie-style “I need to tell you something... [long pause] I’m gay... [gasp]”. As a matter of fact, in the last time I actually had simply talked about my boyfriend the way straight guys talk about their girlfriends – but it still felt like I’m confessing some kind of a secret. Even after years of living outside of my homophobic homeland of Poland, the fear of being ridiculed, unaccepted, discriminated against or beaten up was still there.
But getting married was the final milestone on the way to leaving all of that behind. It made me feel that I actually do have all the same rights and duties as any straight person does. It’s not just “ok” to be gay – it’s perfectly normal. Even the registrar was openly mocking Poland’s backwardness.
I didn’t hesitate for a second to share the good news with anyone. My husband is so wonderful, our love so beautiful, our relationship so strong. I’m proud of him and I’m proud of us.
And all we got was a positive, loving, touching response. Not a single person reacted differently than they would react to any other wedding – not even call it a “gay marriage” or anything. We didn’t get “gay married”, we just got married.
And that’s the kind of society I want to live in. 😌
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