Tuesday, 21 September 2010

On Equality

I am not really an activist. Not an active activist, anyway. More passive.

But I will not be okay with someone using a perjorative term to express discontent. And I will say something about it.

I was unfriended yesterday by someone I've known for, oh, five (?) years. We have bonded over music; the writing, the performing, the enjoyment thereof.

Then he littered a facebook status (of all things) with the word "fag" accompanied by various suffixes.

An update a moment later corrected one of the MANY misspelled words in the previous status but failed to address the used-three-times slur.

I called him out on it.

He told me to grow up and unfriended me. Which of us is the child?

I am not gay, but I will take this personally.

What I am is a girl with friends who are homosexual; friends for whom I would GO TO THE END OF THE EARTH. Friends for whom I would do whatever it took if it meant they would be forever treated with the respect and love they deserve but are not afforded due to bigotry.

Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of it than I need to, but maybe it needs to be a bigger deal than it is. All I know is that I would never have expected that from the un-friend in question. I would have defended him had anyone even suggested that he were a homophobe.

Maybe he's not homophobic, just ignorant.

Either way, I think a bullet was dodged. I don't need hate in my life, and I will not associate with childish, pseudo grown-ups.

2010 is the year of the purge. I hope 2011 is the year of equality and tolerance.

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