The spirit of opposition

[aadler]

 
I just saw some kind of online poster, that started out:

Don’t like gay marriages? Don’t get one.
Don’t like cigarettes? Don’t smoke one.
Don’t like abortions? Don’t have one.
Don’t like porn? Don’t watch it.
Don’t like drugs? Don’t do them.
…
— and on and on. The obvious message, underlined at the end, was that we should all be content to live and let live, and leave other people to follow their own preferences.

So I have to wonder what the people who think that sentiment is so wonderful, so apropos, so true, would think if it read:

Don’t like gay-bashing? Don’t bash one.
Don’t like rape? Don’t commit one.
Don’t like genital mutilation? Don’t perform one.
Don’t like car-bombs? Don’t plant one.
Don’t like child molestation? Don’t molest one.
…
— with the same implication of Follow your own inclinations, and leave other people to follow theirs, because it’s none of your business.

Live-and-let-live applies to a lot of things, but it doesn’t apply to everything. We all have things that we disapprove of to the point that we won’t participate in them, and we all have things that we despise to the point where we feel a moral obligation to oppose them.

Either way, as I saw someone observe, you don’t settle the disagreement by dismissing the opposing viewpoint with a smug cliché.

Comments

[aadler]

In California, civil unions had evolved over the years to the point where the only difference between them and marriage (so far as legal rights were concerned) was the name itself.

Rather than satisfying the activists, this very fact was used by an activist judge to ‘prove’ prejudice. Whereupon he promptly ruled that gay marriage (an inherent oxymoron) was the law of that state, even though the people of California — hardly a hotbed of seething right-wing intolerance — soundly rejected the proposition when the choice was theirs.

Gay people are already allowed to marry … but, since marriage is between a man and a woman, they are inherently disinterested in that. Instead they want to force the other 98.6% of the population to apply the name of marriage to what they do, and anyone who disagrees is instantly labeled a bigot and hatemonger.