Hatred Most Carefully Taught

Hatred Most Carefully Taught:

Homophobia

MARCH 2009

If you are enjoying a cup of chamomile tea or sipping a glass of Chardonnay after a hard day, you might want to stop reading. Right now. Perhaps you could come back to this piece later, after a fight with your spouse or a raise in your rent. Something like that. Because I’m pissed off and I don’t plan to hide it. There’s plenty to be pissed off about these days but I am going to grind a very special axe. Crappy introduction, right? Actually no. It’s dead-on.

On Sunday, July 27, 2008, James D. Adkisson carried a guitar case into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. He opened the case, took out a 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun, and opened fire. It was a random shooting. Two people died and seven were wounded before church members could subdue the murderer.

On December 19, 2008, Kenneth Starr, yes, that Kenneth Starr, joined the legal team defending California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage. He will argue the case before the state Supreme Court. Starr is currently dean of Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu.

What do these two news stories have to do with each other? Just everything. I believe the motivation in both cases is identical. Both were prompted by hatred of liberals in generals and gays in particular. But homophobic hatred has to be learned. You cannot be born with it. You have to be taught to hate that way. Whence all this hatred? It’s a puzzle, isn’t it? Well, no, it isn’t.

Follow this back to the previous generation and then back again and so on and you know where you’ll end up? Religion. Surprise! One surefire example of this comes from Adkisson’s own glaringly half-baked, inarticulate tirade. He used the word “abomination” and that word is straight out of the Bible. It is heard in churches everywhere and on radical right-wing talk radio. But other than that, it isn’t a regularly used word. But it’s a big word for someone as illiterate as Adkisson to spell correctly.

Let’s Kill All the Liberals!

One of Shakespeare’s most memorable quotes is from Henry VI and it hangs in frames on the walls of many attorneys: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” No matter how you look at it, that is funny. What is not funny is a book titled, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37) by Bernard Goldberg. Published in 2005, it helped provide inspiration for Adkisson’s murderous rampage. Note that I said “provide inspiration” and not “caused” because I know there were many causes. But you cannot discount Goldberg’s book any more that you can discount Mein Kampf. Words have power. Why am I making such a fuss about Goldberg’s book? From Adkisson’s would-be suicide diatribe:

“Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate, + House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book.” Since Adkisson did not have access to his intended targets, he had to settle for, in his words, “the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals” and so he opened fire in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. In his handwritten letter, Adkisson casually points out that President Barack Obama has “no brains” after asking and answering the profound question, “How is a man sticking his dick up another man’s ass progress? It’s an abomination.” That brilliant thrust and parry would be agreed with by every fundamentalist Christian minister in this country. Food for thought.

Who Care’s About Grammer And Such As?

True irony: One of Adkisson’s complaints about liberals in his would-be suicide note was that “They have dumbed down education, they have defined deviancy down.” What all is wrong in this run-on sentence? Let me count the ways. Or not. Also from this scholarly masterpiece of literature: “These sick people aren’t liberals, they’re Ultra-Liberals. This is a collection of sicko’s, weirdo’s + homo’s” and, no, I didn’t forget to type the period. (I would cite this mishmash, however, in my current argument for eliminating the apostrophe altogether from the English language since no one know’s how to use it anymore anyway’s. But I digress’.) These errors permeate the Adkisson tirade. He says things like “if they find out your a conservative” and so on. It never ends. One almost humorous error, in an ugly way, is his misspelling of the racist slur “nigger.” He spelled it “niger” which I think says a lot.

I know it seems irrelevant to go on at length about grammar and syntax, but I am trying to make an important point: Education is the enemy of bigotry. I’m not saying that Rush Limbaugh, for example, is illiterate. I am saying that education means far more than literacy, even though the latter usually follows the former. I’m sure Limbaugh knows what a sentence fragment is and how it is allowable as long as the writer/speaker knows that it is a fragment. But sentence structure is only a tiny part of education. I am talking about Education with a capital E. I am talking about growing up with the luxury of not having your mind closed at an early age or, if it has been closed for you, then having the curiosity and tenacity to reach out and open it again. The emphasized phrase is all-important in what I’m trying to say.

Babies are not born with hatred. They are not born with religious beliefs (all babies are atheists, no matter how much water you splash on them) and they haven’t a clue about things like racism or misogyny or homophobia. They must be taught these things. From the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway play, South Pacific, made into a movie in 1958:

“You’ve got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught

From year to year,

It’s got to be drummed

In your dear little ear

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

“You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

“You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You’ve got to be carefully taught!”

♪

Wisdom indeed, and this from a musical! But it speaks volumes. It is so very true that I wonder why we don’t think or talk about it more often. You do have to be taught to hate and fear. A newborn infant knows nothing more than how to suckle and how to grab your hair so tightly it can come out in impressive clumps as you try to unclamp the tiny fingers. But that’s it. Everything else has to be learned.

What’s frightening is that if you were to clean up the spelling and grammatical errors in Adkisson’s invective, a great deal of it sounds exactly like the garbage that you can hear on conservative radio talk-shows. Limbaugh isn’t alone of course in the business of spewing out radical right-wing propaganda, but he’s very well known, so I use him as the archetype for all of them. Phrases like “vast left-wing conspiracy” did not originate in the very unoriginal mind of Adkisson. Limbaugh? Easily. Adkisson? Never.

Regarding the horrific Adkisson attack, Police Chief Sterling Owen said, “It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement.” How does one come to hate the liberal movement and gays specifically? That’s easy. Just turn on AM radio.

Homophobic Hallelujahs

The late Reverend Jerry Falwell said about the 9/11 attacks: “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’ ”

Of course. It’s obvious. On September 11, 2001, a group of zealous, fanatic Muslims attacked a highly Christian nation because gays in America were engaging in sex. Hmmm. Why is it that doesn’t make any sense even for a zealous, fanatic Christian like Falwell? But then he also said this: “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.” And this: “AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” He was not alone of course. Fundamentalists are positively obsessed with homosexuality. One must wonder why.

I am generally leery of psychobabble, even and especially when it comes from “professionals” but on this topic, homosexuality, you have to wonder if there isn’t some truth to the belief that homophobes are really closet, yearning, wannabe, envious and spitefully jealous gays themselves, held back by powerful fears of “sinning” and eternal damnation. They hate the fact that open gays can enjoy their sexuality and this ultimately leads to hating the gays themselves. I can’t know of course, but I can think of no other reason for getting so worked up about it. Who cares what two consenting adults do with their bodies as long as no one else is hurt by it? Who cares? Well, Falwell cared and Pat Robertson and Ken Starr obviously care a great deal. Me? As Rhett said, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

But Kenneth Starr, who was so obsessed with Bill Clinton’s penis that he brought our government to a grinding halt while examining every aspect of The First Penis and its activities, makes me wonder again. Never forget H. L. Mencken’s priceless definition: “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Priceless! Is it also, perhaps, relevant to this discussion? I mean, really, who gives a damn about other people’s genitals? As long as no children are involved, who gives a damn? Well, Ken Starr gives so much of a damn about such things that he is prepared to argue against same-sex marriage before the California Supreme Court. Why on earth does he want to do this? Any kind of marriage actually has very little to do with sex anyway. It is about insurance and inheritance and taxes and Living Wills and many other important societal issues. It is strictly a civil rights matter. But in same-sex marriage, sex always takes center stage as an abomination in these preposterous, hateful, homophobic, religious tirades. Why?

Personally, I think Ken Starr needs a blowjob.

In any event, talk can hurt and talk can kill. Don’t forget that at first Hitler was only talk. It was hate talk, like you can hear on the radio right now, right here, in the good old USA, but still, it began as only talk. That’s how two young men were taught to hate gays, resulting in the hideous beating death of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Talk. They were talked into their hate. Enough talk can result in actions and the Hitler story and the Shepard story are identical in that sense.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” — (Vladimir Lenin of Russian/Soviet fame.) This is true and it must always be guarded against in any free society. Hateful talk can lead to hateful actions. And, tragically for all of us, far too many religions teach hatred.

Sad Summary

So here we are, with the nation’s economy swirling around the drain, people living in their cars, the stock market on its ass, two atrocious wars being fought at the same time, and what are we California taxpayers paying for right at this moment? We are paying the outrageous costs of an outrageous Supreme Court hearing with briefs and oral arguments and all the rest, and for what? To decide whether Proposition 8, a ban on gay marriage, is constitutional. I can barely imagine a worse waste of tax dollars. I am sick to death of bigotry and hate crimes and religions that encourage both. I am sick of T-shirts that say “Turn to Jesus or burn in hell” And I’m also sick of this shit:

The above lovely photo was taken at the Inaugural Concert of President Obama in Washington, D.C., on January 18, 2009. I wish there were a hell so all the bigots could go there.

I told you I was pissed off.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25872864/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/28/jim-d-adkisson-charged-in_n_115281.html

http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/12/familiar_name_joins_prop_8_leg_1.html

http://www.matthewshepard.org/site/PageServer

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