Tag Archives: Hate

Oregon – 1 step forward & 2 steps back

Oregon is considering adding 2 items to the ballot this year.  1 is to allow non-heterosexual couples to marry, and the other is to allow bakers, florists, caterers, or any other business to discriminate against them under religious exemptions, in effect by stating that since their religious beliefs forbid gay & lesbian marriage, then they shouldn’t be forced to do business with them due to their religious beliefs.

If I were a retailer, couldn’t I use the same law to say that I don’t want gays & lesbians in my business?  If I were a developer or landlord, couldn’t I keep them out of my properties & neighborhoods?  And could a doctor refuse to treat them if they need emergency medical services?  What about keeping slaves, since the Bible, and therefore their religion condones slavery?  Acceptance of slavery is all over the Old Testaments & appears more than once in the New Testament as well.

If slavery is an antiquated Biblical idea that we’ve overcome, how about our negativity & discrimination toward gays & lesbians?

We can’t make laws to require everyone to come together as one in our society & care at least as much for each other as we do ourselves.  Besides being a hippie Utopian dream, we raise our young to be warlike, animalistic, reptilian-brained creatures who seem to have no compassion for anything but their own needs & desires, and we look at those ideas as being non-rewarding socialism unless we give it of our own volition in dribs & drabs of charity to make ourselves feel good, but we shouldn’t be making laws that continue to separate us from each other using standards applied unequally to segments within our society.  That is the definition of discrimination in a nutshell.

It’s hard to believe that in 2014, we’re still fighting that battle.  Besides, I’ve always said that gays & lesbians have the right to get married & be as miserable as the rest of us married people.

It’s not all black and white

I’ve referred to this before, but not only are the answers to our society’s problems in shades of grey rather than black or white, so are our races & the way we view them.

Our society doesn’t have a clue as to how bigoted we really are until we actually stop & think about the people who we call “Black”. For the record, I prefer the terms Black & White for those races because I don’t use euphemisms, except that I’ve somehow gotten trapped into using the word “issue” at times when I mean “problem”, at least when I trying to sell a “problem” on somebody as an “issue”, but I prefer to call the so-called African-Americans “Black” & the Caucasian European-Americans “White”. So sue me or call me archaic in that respect; I can live with that, but let’s call it what it is.  After all, aren’t Egyptians & the various Muslim-based Saharan tribes of North Africa & the whites in South Africa actually African-American if they come here to live, even though these people don’t have black or dark brown skin?  Calling someone who’s Black an African-American isn’t being completely truthful, and to step away from the word “Black” by Blacks means that they’ve accepted that the word “Black” is a negative connotation that they don’t want to be a part of, and that’s truly lamentable, as we White people are the root cause of that.

We call Maya Rudolph & President Obama “Black”, but they are neither — they are mixed-race, being 50/50 White & Black, and since the term “mixed race” implies “impurity” as to race & because they have an ounce of Black blood (the ancient “one-drop” rule), our society automatically calls them Black, which is a negative in the eyes of White society if they have any color other than White in their ethnicity.

But the fact is, they’re as White as they are Black if they’re 50/50 White & Black. So think about this — if they aren’t called “White” because they aren’t 100% White, why should they be called “Black” if they’re not 100% Black?

As far as changing society’s ills & our preoccupation for what color you are, it won’t change socially until there is a desire for change in the masses, and it probably won’t change in our lifetimes and probably not in our grandkids’ lifetimes either. Blacks have been free for appx 150 years and it’s been a slow climb to get where they are now (which isn’t nearly where they should be by now & not entirely their fault by any means), and a lot of their brothers & sisters haven’t made the climb very well, if at all. They have freedom, but they don’t have true acceptance or universal social equality here or abroad, and they have a lot of problems within their own society that might not be cured anytime in the next 50 years — it took the White Italian immigrants about 100 years to rise out of the slums and be accepted as mainstream Americans & move to the suburbs, and there are still times that they have trouble gaining acceptance among the more pearly-white Americans of Northern European backgrounds.

As The Rev Charles once said, Luke is — not from New Jersey

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Let’s start this with something the far right can understand and appreciate — biblical scripture — Luke 9:51-56: “Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face.  And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him.  But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.  And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from Heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?’  But He turned and rebuked them, and said, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.  For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.’  And they went to another village.”

What this says to me is liking or hating anyone simply based upon their beliefs, race, or being different in any manner that they cannot change is prejudicial & wrong — end of discussion.  I know that religious beliefs can be changed, but that doesn’t mean they should be changed simply because they don’t agree with yours.  Heck, in my opinion, the fact that you embrace religion at all is a negative to me, but I respect your right to be ignorant as long & deeply as you want.

The biggest problem I have with the far right is that they believe their religious beliefs & their use of them for personal/financial gain & human segregation is beyond reproach, including the use of them to align groups of people against each other socially & professionally. This type of behavior is just a stone’s throw from radical Muslims who kill people whenever their religion is “blasphemed” in their eyes, or Hitler Youth for that matter — the Jews of yesterday are the social/political critics & “deviants” of today.

Intolerance seems to be the theme in many religions & politics, which tends to go against the intent of the founders of them, like Jesus, who would surely abhor the bashing of those who don’t believe the same as he did.  This is a (surely fictional) being who helped the poor, walked among the lepers, and threw out the moneychangers, all ideas that today’s Christians & Republicans don’t embrace, which is the true meaning of the work “ironic” if you ask me.

I understand that people are passionate about their religious beliefs, but I’m not, and I don’t like the level of intolerance they invoke when confronted by people like me who do not believe as they do, labeling me as a hatemonger when I point out the fact that religion is simply unproven theory and that I have no respect for the idea of it.  I don’t hate them; I simply have no respect for their ideology.

I find it hard to discuss anything rationally or intelligently with most people on the far right, especially those who consider themselves highly religious. I don’t agree with speech that demeans a person or a particular group simply according to their race, religious choice (or lack thereof), sexual orientation, or nationality without regard for any other issue thereof, nor do I support any group of people or any person who holds those views, and I don’t believe (the fictional character of) Jesus would have either. People have been using certain archaic notions written in the Bible for centuries to justify their hate for various groups and it will probably never end.

It’s a different matter entirely to not like an idea that is detachable from a person vs not liking that a person is gay, or black, or some other condition that they can’t & shouldn’t change.

Politics preys on the weak

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Politics should not be about increasing the wealth & power of only certain individuals or segments of our population who clearly don’t need its help, including special-interest groups.  It should be about ideals that bring society together on a just & fair plane with a better societal direction & working to rectify problems, achieve goals & maintain a fair societal balance rather than separating us into unequal divisions fueled by hate, greed & egotistical values.

Our people should be taken care of in all their basic needs as needed, such as adequate safe housing that has access to proper infrastructure such as sanitary sewer/septic systems, public water & electricity, free & proper health care, treatment for mental issues & addictive disorders and given basic food if they cannot afford it. However, this help should be temporary and only as-needed, and those “in the system” need to be trained & educated to get out of it quickly, and failure to do so should land them in a minimum-security “educational prison” until they learn a trade they can use to earn a living. Many homeless are so simply of their own choosing/doing, and many people getting welfare refuse to improve themselves to try & get off it.

Unlike animals, our human minds are naturally geared toward compassion, reason & rationalization in a zero-sum game rather than being polar opposites fighting for survival — instead, we are taught to hate those who are different & see things differently & we despise the weak & less-fortunate in our society.

We do that because we’ve been taught to win at all costs & punish those who don’t make the grade for whatever reason, and that’s what will cost us as a society at some point — we’re paying for it now by worshiping people who have no business being idolized simply because our society looks upon them as strong, beautiful, or some other appealing yet superficial trait.

Until we can treat all of our citizens with respect, and until all our citizens work to earn that respect, we will be doomed to mediocrity.