I Am Me

Saturday, February 4

New Bedford doesn't raise teenagers to hate gays.

So what else is new? This sounds remarkably similar to a little town in Wyoming, with the murder of Matthew Shephard...

Hmm, so let's explore this a bit shall we? We have 2 remarkably similar "incidents", excuse me, "alleged incidents"...

In both cases, the following is true:
- both victims were gay males
- both alleged perpetrators were "homophobic" - i.e. hate homosexual males.
- both victims were seriously hurt or killed
- both crimes were motivated by a hate so seething, so deep, so evil, it defies fathoming.
- both towns of the perpetrators deny responsibility for these crimes, because hate is not a core value of the town.

Ok, but where did these perpetrators grow up? Mars? I think not. They were socialized by their respective hometowns, they were raised by parents/families in those hometowns, and you can't just dismiss this. Certain towns are not more hateful than others, but in every town there is someone who hates fags. It doesn't matter if there's hate in the town or not, it matters how the town tolerates that hate. If the town turn a blind eye, it is permissing this hate, treating it as a normal, allowablke response to homosexuals. If the town does anything less than condemning hate, they must claim some of the responsibility for the crimes that occurred. They encouraged the environment in the perps' hate grew.

Maybe Laramie and New Bedford didn't pull the trigger or knife on the victim, but they acknowleged it was okay to feel like thinking/committing this kind of hate crime is tolerable.

And that kind of tolerance from anyone is more than intolerable. It is unacceptable.

Kim 11:07 PM |