I recently read a blog post by Matt Walsh, titled, “If you want to prove you don’t hate gays, all you have to do is worship at their feet.” It posed the idea that their is no neutral territory between being for or against gay people and the so called, “child murderers.” It took me a minute to figure out that he meant abortion.
While I do not agree with the general opinion he held in his article, one train of thought did intrigue me. His defense of Tony Dungy in respect to not picking Michael Sam. His stance was that the former NFL coach did not want all the media attention that would come from having an openly gay member on the team. This seems valid to me, because there is alot of media attention on homosexuality right now. It’s a hot topic, some supportive, others against.
A great deal of the rest of the article used very violent terminology and various examples to explain how being gay should not be compared to the racism that black people felt in America until recently, and still do feel. I recently went to a workshop about race in the workplace, it brought up the topics of stereotypes and the dangers of the single story. What does that mean? Basically it covers how it can be easy to base a perception of a person or culture, off of a single story about them. Because all you know is that story. Do you see how that can be harmful? The original TedTalks video of this can be found here, told by the wonderful Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Basically what my point is, it disturbs me how the blog post above, is so angrily defending it's one story.
When he speaks of child murderers, has he considered that in some cases abortion may be the most merciful option. What if upon receiving the ultrasound the parents and doctors discover that there is a no chance of the child's survival in the world? Would it be best to bring the child into the world, full knowing that the little it may survive to experience would be painful and short? What would be the best course of action in that case. I'm not saying abort kids that would make like difficult, I'm just saying consider other points of view.
Why can't there be middle ground on homosexuality? I openly support gay people, but I also respect your ability to disagree with that. What happens behind closed doors is none of my business (as long as everyone involved is an adult and consenting). So if it's true that Tony Dungy was only trying to avoid media attention, or a distraction to his team, then whatever, maybe he could have chosen a better way to go about it. Who knows, maybe including Michael Sam would have weathered any storms.
Mostly what gets me, is the one side story that is coming from the article, that from reading the article and the comments below, I can see that opinions are barbed. I felt that posting anything to the author, would not be taken seriously, as I felt I would be taken as the enemy. I did know that reacting to anything that was said would be foolish, because why start a debate over something the other party is convinced of. So this is me, just getting my opinion out there.
Maybe I should stop clicking on facebook posts with provocative titles...
(I have no idea why the font color is wonky)
(I have no idea why the font color is wonky)
