Intolerance

Dateline, Montgomery Alabama, 1954: How *DARE* those uppity negros protest our fine upstanding segregation laws! Y'know, these liberals preach tolerance, why can't they practice what they preach? Intolerance of our segregation laws by those uppity niggers is hypocrisy!

Dateline, New Hampsire, 2010: How *DARE* those uppity gays protest our fine upstanding laws discriminating against gays by prohibiting them from marrying each other? Y'know, those liberals preach tolerance, why can't they practice what they preach? Intolerance of our discrimination laws by those uppity faggots is hypocrisy! Because, of course, tolerance of bigotry and hatred against niggersfaggots is just the American way, and people who protest against it are intolerant!

Alrighty then, glad that folks preaching bigotry and hatred have edumacated me...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Gays are the new nigger

I was in the American South when desegregation became the law. When school districts in Bigotsville were forced to hold bi-racial proms, they did what bigots always do in that case -- they cancelled the prom, and instead the White Leagues held a private prom -- no niggers allowed, on penalty of being arrested for trespassing by bull-necked white Sheriff's deputies stationed outside. And believe me, if you were a black boy or girl, that's the last thing you wanted to have happen to you -- because you might never make it to the police station afterwards, and then the FBI would be dragging the river for your body a few months later.

So when I hear that the same thing happened to a gay girl in Mississippi, it's like I'm having dejavu all over again. These inbred redneck cracker motherfuckers ain't learned a goddamned fucking thing in the past forty years. They're still the same hate-filled spiteful cocksucking bastards as always, pure festering evil masquerading as human beings, just looking for a new nigger to hate now that their old ones have given them the finger and worse. And now they found one: Gays.

So it goes in the State of Mississippi. We shoulda let'em secede in 1861. Just sayin'.

-- Badtux the Observant Penguin

And today on World Nut Daily...

We find out that the right-wing hate radio hosts are wetting their pants over the possibility of having to give equal time to the targets of their hate. Note that you do *not* find any left-wing talk show hosts (the few who exist) ranting over the possibility of giving equal time to the targets of their shows... indeed, most go ahead and do so as a matter of course. Rather, it's the right-wingers who are peeing their pants over the possibility that if they, say, bash gay people, they might be required to give equal time to someone from the Human Rights Campaign...

Of course, this just goes to show the whole intellectual bankruptcy of right-wing hate radio in the first place. They can only exist because their wealthy patrons have purchased the public airwaves and will not allow other voices on those airwaves, because if there were other voices on those airwaves, then their message of hate would not work. Remember, you can only hate that which you do not know. If you interact with a gay person on a daily basis, it is hard to hate gays. Hate radio's scream-mongers can operate only because they can keep their audience ignorant. If their audience actually got to hear a real-life Muslim or gay or Mexican immigrant or whatever talking about their life, why, their audience might decide not to hate those people. Gasp! No wonder the right-wing hate-mongers are wetting their pants so much about that possibility!

-- Badtux the "Right wing intellectually bankrupt?" Penguin

No on hate. No on 8.

Reminder: If you're in California, don't stop at voting for Obama. Make sure you go down and vote no on bigotry and hate too. Vote 'No' on Proposition 8, which would take away the right of Californians to marry whatever consenting adult they wish to marry.

I drove by some Mormons who were demonstrating for Prop 8 on Saturday. You can always tell Mormons because they always have that cleancut look and are the whitest most tight-assed honkeys you ever seen. Must be that magic underwear they gotta wear as part of their faith or something. I already voted 'no' on 8, so I did the only thing that was possible and reasonable for me to do: I gave'em the uplifted middle finger. One of the teenagers grinned and let out a Confederate "Yee-haw!" yell. Guess they don't teach them Mormon kids what the uplifted middle finger means, heh!

-- Badtux the Voting Penguin

The face of hatred

It is a deceptively mild and soft-spoken face, this face of hate that knocks on my door. He is accompanied by a hatchet-faced woman with a dour look, and they have an agenda to sell. Their agenda is Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative to amend the California Constitution with a constitutional amendment to eliminate the right for gays to marry. After ascertaining that they do in fact live in this apartment complex so I can't simply call the cops and have them hauled off for trespassing, I politely tell them that I do not talk to bigots and that the guy ought to get counseling to deal with his suppressed homosexuality, and close the door on them.

It is all too common to believe that the face of evil is one that is foam-flecked with gleaming eyes and a scowling expression. But that is not it at all. I grew up in the American South as the walls of segregation were tumbling down. I grew up in an environment where a great-uncle was a KKK member and where the Klan still regularly held cross-burnings in clearings way back in the woods (they were illegal in our state -- cross-burnings, that is, there was a law outlawing the desecration of religious symbols that was used to prosecute people who participated in cross-burnings -- but the law was rarely enforced, especially when several of the people under the hoods were Sheriff's deputies). I grew up in an environment where cops joked in my father's barber shop about going "nigger-knocking" down in "nigger-town", where the word "nigger" was as common as the word "Coke" (used for any carbonated soda drink, this was long before cocaine came to town), where people talked in all seriousness about "those goddamned niggers don't know their place anymore, they want to take away all our jobs."

What I'm saying is that I know what hatred and bigotry looks like, and it looks like... well, my neighbor. Just another person. The phrase "the banality of evil" first applied to Eichmann applies equally to those who today would exterminate gays the same way their forefathers would have exterminated Jews, if only they could get away with it. Because they cannot, because they are on the losing side of a culture war that has decided that hate is, like, a bummer, man, they instead dress their evil in code words and cloak it in normality. But whether you hate "kikes" or "niggers" or "faggots", it's all the same. It's all hatred, it's all bigotry, and it's all evil. And the fact that this evil comes with the face of a mild-mannered man who looks about as dangerous as a puppy dog lessens that evil not one bit.

-- Badtux the not-Evil Penguin