When Are We Going to Learn?

Gay Opinion Blog: Some are still accepted targets for derisive chants

When’s it going to end? When are people going to realize that we can’t change the world overnight, and enforcing our views on others merely gives them something else to beef about?

As a black, Christian, Rastafari, lesbian, I think I am on the forefront of the ‘political correctness’ minefield. People I work with are always trying to watch what they say because they don’t want to ‘offend’ me; I feel like I’m wearing a huge sign on my forehead: BLACK LESBIAN RASTA; WATCH WHAT YOU SAY TO ME!! Sure, I get offended by things like anyone else, but come on, if you can tell the joke about the farmer’s daughters around me even though I’m a Christian, why can’t you tell a joke about how Rastas are famous for smoking ganja so they can do the 5 jobs they have? I’m a Rastafarian true, but I’m a person who knows that people are people; political correctness can go too far. I can’t force anyone to accept homosexuality if they don’t want to, but I can make whatever open-mindedness they may have been gaining slam narrower than Hilary Clinton’s lips if I am always crying "Foul!" over what people say. People calling me a dyke doesn’t affect me; being told I can’t marry my partner does. Those are the kinds of issues we should be fighting over, not what some drunk lunkhead at a hockey game in Madison Square Garden shouts out. The rights we should be fighting for are civil rights, like the right to have medical insurance for the children in same-sex relationships; the right to visit our loved one in the hospital and/or make their decisions for them when they’re incapacitated; the right to walk down the aisle anywhere we like, and say "I do" to the person we love, without some nitwit saying we’re degrading the institution of marriage. These are the kinds of rights I’m interested in having; although I would love to go to a sporting event or a concert, or even a movie without hearing some jerk derisively calling someone a ‘faggot’ or a ‘dyke’, I’m not going to sweat it, because in the grand scheme of things, that person and their comments really don’t have anything to do with me and mine.

And that’s Live From Bikini Bottom…..