A Frightening Bit of Legislation

It is only now that I am so much older than I was that I realize how naive and stupid I truly am.

Growing up I was taught about slavery, and how it is bad. I was taught about intolerance, and how it is bad. I was taught about murder, torture, harassment, and all kinds of things like that. And I was told those things were bad.

To me, it seemed as though this must have been new information for us all. For most of the adults I knew were very prejudiced against black people. They did not go by the name African-American at that time. Black Power was just coming on the scene.

There was tremendous intolerance for gay people. They were called "queers" when I was young. Faggot was a term used for guys, and Dyke was for gals. Not exactly endearing terms, were they?

I was guilty of using all the nasty words. Everybody was using them, so it only seemed right. Everybody, that is, except the people on the receiving end of those insults.

Suffering from my own persecutions, and even at times having the queer terms used toward me, I came to realize it was all wrong. I have always had gay and lesbian friends. I didn't always know it, despite everyone else seemingly aware. But you see I don't really care about that aspect of my friends' lives. They're my friends. What else do they need to be?

But I believed that people were finally "getting it", and that all of this hatred was fading away. Mine would be the generation to finally end racial hatred. Sexual inequality. Social casting. And so forth.

As it turns out my generation is more guilty of the crimes than any generation which has gone before. I say this because my generation has had all of the previous generations to look at and learn from. But we learned the wrong lessons.

I have seen prime examples within arm's reach of racial hatred. Gender hatred. Hatred against class. Hatred against gays and lesbians. I have seen all of these things which before, in my state of premeditated blindness, I failed to see.

It is exhausting to realize how many people just plain hate people who are different. This is whether the difference is skin color, faith, gender, sexual preference, class, and country. But we can't give up trying to put a stop to the hatred.

Thanks to Fairyhedgehog, I am now aware of something happening in Uganda. Granted, since I don't live in Uganda I have no real right to tell them what they should and shouldn't do. But what they are planning on doing is frightening. Basically, they are considering passing a law which implements the death penalty for gay and lesbian people. You can read Fairyhedghog's post here, and the New York Times article here.

I made my own post, speaking to the Christian community, on Faith in Forgiveness. That's another of my blogs. Not one which receives a lot of visits. Guess I'm not much of a Christian. Fortunately for me, God bases Christianity on forgiveness and not the opinions of others. I'm mostly a powerless person, but I speak when and how I can.

I wish we would all just stop hating each other. So many (most) of the world's problems would just go away if we did.