| | Initially I didn't want to post this article, since I believed that the various threads re homosexuality had run their course for now. (Ironically, the author is one of the two or three folk who, some weeks ago, moaned that the subject was getting too much attention. Another of them has submitted a poll on the very subject he felt was getting too much attention.) But I *did* post it in the end, just so that I could record my disagreement with its core premise, that actually has nothing to do with homosexuality; the same issue I'm about to raise could have arisen re any other subject about which people on SOLOHQ have disagreed.
The issue is this: the equating of objectivity with staying above the fray & not raising one's voice. Mr. Cordero is suggesting that both sides in the homo debate demeaned themselves & the validity of their arguments by getting angry. He further says it was *understandable* that they'd get angry, given x, y & z, but implies that it was regrettable nonetheless, because ... well, just *because*. Folk should *never* get angry, period! If they *do* get angry, that means they've abandoned objectivity.
I couldn't disagree more. I want to make it as plain as I can that I regret neither getting angry nor anything I said while angry; there is not a single thing I said that I regard as "over the top" or that I couldn't defend rationally as being true.
If I achieve nothing more in my life I hope I can dissuade people from this vicious notion that the most important thing in life is never to get angry & always to be civil, no matter *what* one is confronted with. To understand the vileness of that proposition, one only has to ask who, in a contest between right & wrong, stands to gain from it? Chamberlain was polite to Hitler; Hitler was polite to Chamberlain. Does their politeness redeem either of them?
Of course, not all conflicts are so clear-cut, & one shouldn't get angry prematurely, or adopt a policy of chronic, morbid incivility just for the hell of it. But the bad faith of one side in the homosexuality debate *became* clear-cut, much sooner than the point at which *I* became angry, to anyone who cared to follow it closely. To suggest with *this* degree of hindsight that it's a pity that *anyone* got angry, & suggest that only those who stayed above the fray could emerge with any credit, reflects precisely the kind of unprincipled amoralism that is destroying the world. It's the kind of insipid, insidious amoralism that tut-tuts about people getting angry, with no regard for what it is they're getting angry about. It's the disgusting amoralism James Kilbourne writes about in his article, "Don't be cool, BE HOT!"
To which I would add - objectivity *demands* it!
Linz
(Edited by Lindsay Perigo on 10/03, 3:05am)
|
|
