New Gay Pride
Not So Gay
Hate: the New ‘Family’ Value?
Bloodlust Feels Good
Not long ago, in gay rights demonstrations around the
country, it was routine to find posters and all manner of signs that read, “Hate
Is not a Family Value.” How times
have changed. Maybe it is okay as
long as you hate all the “right people”?
It seems one constant of human behavior is bloodlust. But it is not just the desire for revenge
we are referring to here. It is the
growing visceral contempt and hatred for others that human beings seem to
embrace when they gain advantage over an opposing side - even when that advantage
is freely surrendered by the other side.
You see this in contests between nations, you can see it between small
groups, and even between two people. Old
is the story of the younger brother always less favored than his older brother
by their father, where the younger brother then grows more angry and
contemptuous of the older brother with each overture of reconciliation and expression
of regret by the elder – each seen by the younger not as a gesture of
goodwill, but as an admission of guilt, of deserved culpability and blame, expressed
only because of weakness and retreat, not moral reflection or evolution. The story never ends happily.
Words vs. Sticks and Stones
American history has been nothing if not a constant reflection
by those with the greatest voting power regarding the fair treatment of those
with less power. Many on the Left
today like to believe that it is the superior moral power of their charges
and accusations that brings people to heel to their demands, and thus, any concession
is not one to be appreciated, but to be taken as evidence of their own moral
superiority over all those who oppose them.
We might say that the mindset is very similar to those of the Spanish
Inquisitors or Soviet Commissars.
The truth is, if the power of words of indignation and moral
demand was all that was needed to secure freedoms, there would be no
dictatorships on earth, no slavery, no mass slaughters, no tyrannies of any
kind over others with the ability to talk.
All anyone would need is a good speech. Even sympathetic courts are not enough. Countless are the court decisions in other
nations that have been rendered invalid by incensed mobs and self-interested sociopathic
rulers alike. Courts only have power
when the people agree to abide them.
The fact, the undeniable truth, is that at every advance
of human, political, and civic rights in the United States, the voting
majority, even in war, had to at some point take a stand and accept a step in
the direction that surrendered some of their power in favor of those with
less. Whether it was men voting to
give women the power to vote, or white Americans voting for the Civil Rights
acts of the 1960’s, or heterosexuals now turning to favor gay rights more
broadly in every respect, the appeal to the majority for the higher fulfillment
of America’s founding ideals is what has brought us this far.
The Faith of MLK
We are not better than the people that came before us. We are not superior to those who raised us. We are heirs to their hard-fought lessons,
traditions, and moral foundations that have enabled us to build on the
progress they made across not just the last two-plus centuries, but since
humankind first began its first steps to discovering and understanding what elevating
human freedom should be.
Continued
column 2 >
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Ultrapolis World Forecast & Review
Ultrapolis Project
– ultrapolisproject.com
832-782-7394
Editor: Marco Antonio
Roberts
Copy Editor: Michael
Alberts
Contributing
Editors:
Mark Eastman
Mark Steele
contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com
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< From
column 1
If it is true that good words and deeds calling
people to a higher understanding of freedom and justice have had the power
in the United States of America to bring about that higher freedom and
justice, it is only because there was an audience for those words and
deeds. The great Martin Luther King
must have had faith that the better part of white America, confronted with the
cruel and immoral reality of racial segregation and white racism, would
turn against it. He must have believed
that when whites heard him quote from the Anglo-white written document
called the Declaration of Independence, white America would want to be
truer to it. It was a faith well
placed. (Some will deny the
undeniable, that progress has been made, but that is because they cannot, like
the disadvantaged younger brother, ever give any credit at all.)
How
Many Can You Hate
In many recent postings online in
the wake of the recent Supreme Court decisions affecting the issue of gay
marriage, along the celebratory remarks were numerous condemnations and
expressions of hatred for those deemed evil because of their opposition to
gay marriage. One typical example,
posted by an intelligent, professional, well-educated, and otherwise
congenial person read like this:
I hate
homophobes, People who work to pass laws denying rights to us because
we are gay are indeed HOMOPHOBES! I'm not going to hate away all my
enemies. I'm going to call a spade a spade and FIGHT BACK!!! If it walks
like a homophobe, talks like a homophobe, and passes laws denying my
equality, then it is a homophobe!
This phenomenon in the wider media
and academia was remarked upon in a recent issue of the progressively
liberal New Republic by pro-gay marriage Michael Kingsley in an
articled titled “Being
Against Marriage Equality Doesn’t Make You a Monster.”
When the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) was passed, most Democrats, black and white, supported it, and
Democratic President Bill Clinton signed into law. Until the polls changed, President
Barack Obama was not supportive of gay marriage, and neither were most
Americans. Were they all deserving
of hate when they were not on board with gay marriage? Most of the people of the earth are not
on board today with this radical change in view. All of them homophobes to be hated?
(Note: The remarks by some members of the
Supreme Court that “animus” was the basis of opposition to gay marriage has
only fed this view, and was real ‘judgmentalism’ against other Americans
that allowed the jurists to not address directly any of the actual
arguments for the stated positions.
This is a disservice to the gay marriage debate, for it allows arguments
against gay marriage to remain unanswered.)
Continued
column 3 >
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< From
column 2
The Moral
Clarity of Pain
As gay rights have advanced since
the 1950’s, the tone of gay rights activism and sentiment towards others
has turned from one of convincing, explaining, and promoting understanding
to one of judgmental condemnation, and loud denunciation of all who
oppose. Not just targeting their
ideas, mind you, but the totality of their worthiness as humans. Other movements seemed to have followed
the same ever-angrier path.
Most oppressed or disadvantaged
human beings are not inherently superior to most human beings on the other
end of the power spectrum. If their
views happen to be closer to the truth, it is almost certainly because as
oppressed or disadvantaged, the truth is easier to see, and their emotional
and personal stake in justice is far greater. Their clarity is not evidence of inherent superiority, it is the
expression of rational self-interest that all humans share.
Justice is Humble and Patient
In many places around the world and throughout time, each birth of human
aspiration for freedom and true justice has nearly always been extinguished
in its infancy. But, in the United
States, the majority of Americans have time and again heard the call of freedom,
the call for true justice from those among them they previously did not
understand. And at each time,
freedom has expanded. This is not a
sign of the moral superiority of the oppressed, or the rightness of
supplanting one hate for another.
It is evidence of a particular kind of moral equality: Just as
bloodlust is a constant of human behavior, so is the desire of most human
beings, presented with free information, to be fair and just to their
fellow men and women - a wonderful manisfestation of human nature enabled
by the remarkable foundations of this country.
We are
all to some extent products of our circumstances, and we should humbly
accept the good fortune of our circumstances if these have led us closer to
good truth. And, in this good
fortune we should find the magnanimity to extend some forbearance for those
that as fellow human beings have not made that journey yet.
Our forecast record cannot be beat.
One can follow the herd chasing the latest hyperbolic, melodramatic,
and soon-forgotten micro-trend on Facebook and Twitter, or one can be
wisely and judiciously in front of it with UWFR.
Comments may be
directed to contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com,
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