They always say we’re calling them names and refusing to engage their arguments, but when a gay conservative states that Kirk Cameron’s horrific anti-gay views are not hatred, I have a hard time not believing that it isn’t simply self-loathing:
Now, I do not share Kirk Cameron’s view that homosexuality is “unnatural” and believe this view shows an incredible ignorance of the history of human behavior and of artistic and mythological representations of human relationships.
That said, there is a difference between expressing a view colored by a fundamentalist faith and manifesting animus to those who do not live by the strictures of that faith. In expressing his (very) un-PC views (and, in my mind, narrow) opinion on homosexuality, Cameron has never adopted a hostile (or hateful) attitude toward gay people.
“A view colored by a fundamentalist faith” is, indeed, in this case, “manifesting animus!” It IS hostility, just as the missives sent down from hate groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association are hostility. One need not be actively beating the hell out of a gay person in an alley to be expressing hatred for us.
The question is not so much why Mr. Cameron holds these views, but why Ms. Curry would compare them to “hate speech.” Couldn’t she have questioned them using different language, asking instead why he believes homosexuality to be unnatural, possibly rebutting him with evidence of social tolerance for homosexuality in, say, the ancient Near East and classical Greece?
Because that would be stupid and irrelevant. Kirk Cameron’s anti-gay statements are, in and of themselves, hate. The fact that he holds fundamentalist religious views which prop up his anti-gay hatred is of no consequence, as it tends to be fundamentalist religious views which inform animus toward minorities of all kinds.
We are not the ones with something to defend here, and it’s the belief that there is some “civil discourse” to be had on the subject that slows down full acceptance of LGBT people. The Kirk Camerons of the world need to be called to answer for their irrational, uninformed bigotry, because they inject their “deeply held beliefs” into the public discourse, and their messages of hate reach vulnerable gay kids. So please, no, Ann Curry doesn’t need to talk about the “evidence of social tolerance for homosexuality in…the ancient Near East and classical Greece.”
The mainstream of America finally supports full equality for gay people. The argument is finished.
