The Price of Intolerance

I know its been a while since I've written on anything too terribly serious -- I figure there is plenty of that going around. I've been doing my best to focus on the positive things in the world. Even though there's a lot of chaos out there, I still get the sense that things are moving in the right direction, even if its ever so slowly. Still, every once in a while I can't ignore some of what's gone on recently.

Flash back to the Andrea Yates story -- the mother who drowned her 5 children in a bathtub back in 2001. Apparently, she's recently testified that she drowned one of her children because she feared he might become a "mute gay prostitute." Similarly, last year a man killed his 3-year old son by "forc[ing] him into a box and repeatedly slapp[ing] him on the head in an effort to prevent him from being gay." A friend of the father testified, "he didn't want him to be a sissy."

Admittedly, it appears that both these people might have had some significant psychological disturbances. That said, the underlying message they're receiving from society is chilling -- not only is it bad to be gay, its actually better to be dead if there's even the possibility that you're gay, even if you're just a little kid. I'm not even getting into the hanging of gay men in Iran... This is just another reminder that ultimately, the price of hatred and intolerance is paid in blood. This is true whether its the matter of homosexuality/gender-identity, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, lack-of religion, fat-ness, thin-ness, baldness, left-handedness, whatever. Its time for the madness to stop. For all of us, its time to wake up.