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Loading ...Neff: Breaking the addiction to hate
It will be a while before I can stomach Maine lobster.
I react to events that way.
I take them personally, and I react personally.
A celebrity offends LGBTs, I want to stay away from her movies or tune out his music.A politician votes against LGBTs, I want to vote against him or her.
A church disparages LGBTs, I want to tally up all the injustices, crimes and offenses committed by the church.
The majority of a state votes for institutional discrimination against LGBTs, I want to return the pain.
Maine voters on Nov. 3 cast ballots to repeal a gay-marriage bill signed into law in May by Democratic Gov. John Baldacci.
There was a lot of money from both sides pumped into the election. There were a lot of television ads. There was a lot of knocking on doors and dialing phones. There was a lot of commitment to the campaigns inside and Maine and outside Maine.
And there was a lot at stake.
If voters had upheld the law, it would have been the first time a state’s voters endorsed marriage for same-sex couples.
Instead, voters delivered another first — the first time an electorate overturned a gay-marriage law enacted by state lawmakers.
Now I’m boiling over Maine.
Where to direct the anger?
Not at legislators, who voted for marital rights for same-sex couples.
Not at the governor, who signed the bill for marital rights for same-sex couples.
Not at the coalition of national, state and local LGBT groups that raised money and rallied volunteers.
Not at Maine’s newspapers, which in editorials urged voters to defeat the anti-gay initiative.
The anger is directed at the religious institutions — specifically the Catholic Church — and the right-wing organizations — specifically the National Organization for Marriage — that fueled the anti-gay drive.
And the anger is directed at the voters who gobbled up the lies and hate like candy — or, like dope.
Yes, considering the relationships between NOM and the voter, the church and the voter, I’m reminded of the drug dealer and the user — one pushes dope, one gets doped and we suffer, society suffers.
People cling to lies about LGBT people because they confirm pre-existing beliefs. They seek out information to support their beliefs, and oh, yes, they do feed on the false information when it is pushed on them.
A study by researchers at the University of Buffalo examined why voters clung so to the belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the terrorist attacks on the United States in Sept. 11, 2001, even after evidence proved otherwise.
The researchers, in a paper in Sociological Inquiry, argued that people continued to believe in a connection because of their pre-existing beliefs about the Bush administration. Believers in the president and his administration sought justification for the decision to go to war and held to the false belief.
The researchers explained this as “inferred justification,” a phenomenon in which someone has a belief and finds information — regardless of its accuracy — to support the belief.
The researchers also cited the theory of cognitive dissonance, which explains that information that contradicts a pre-existing belief prompts a defense — the information is ignored as if it doesn’t exist or the information motivates a person to discredit the source.
So, remembering Maine, how do we go forward?
We’ve already declared war on the anti-gay pushers and, just like the war on drugs, it’s a costly battle.
What we’ve got to do more effectively is break the cycle of addiction to lies and hate, prejudice and misinformation among those who don’t realize they’ve got a problem, among those who, when their pre-existing belief is challenged, score some more dope.
Normally I agree with you, Lisa, but in this case I most definitely do not. The goal should not be to undermine religious institutions or protest at the way they corrupt religion to justify trampling on our rights. Sure, the world would be a much better place if Churches preached tolerance rather than hatred, but ultimately people will believe whatever they want to believe, and no amount of foot stamping on our part will make a damn bit of difference.
No, I don’t blame the Churches. I don’t blame religion. I don’t blame those people who spread messages of hate. I don’t blame the idiots who bought into their arguments. I blame the laws that allowed people to simply vote away our civil rights.
Religion owes us nothing. The law, on the other hand, has an obligation to protect us, even if said law is unpopular with the masses. Democracy can sometimes be taken too far, and we have clearly seen that in Maine and California. Laws were introduced to give us the rights we deserve, and laws were used to overturn those rights.
It’s time to change the law to prevent the population from overturning decisions by the courts, but our elected representatives. Sure, in some places that may mean we have a battle to convince a smaller group of people to accept change, to accept that we are entitled to certain rights, but that battle will be much easier to win than one fought against the religiously indoctrinated general public.
We rely on the courts to protect our rights. We rely on elected officials to implement laws to grant us rights. If those rights are to be taken away then it is the courts and legislature who should be the ones to take them away – not wider society.
Our focus now should be on changing the law to ensure that the next time a court or legislative body grants us rights, the public cannot simply vote them away. Until the law is changed we must view any victory as a temporary one, one that can be taken away at any time.
Ugh. It’s just ridiculous. I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you despise me. Just let me marry the man I love. If you don’t want me to marry in your church, fine I wont. I wouldn’t get married in a church anyway because I don’t want to be reminded of religion when I’m looking at my wedding pictures. My sister’s argument against gay marriage is that she doesnt want to go to the mall with her kids and see two guys walking around holding hands. Um.. You already see that, gay marriage isn’t going to change anything in your lives.. just let me do my thing.
But it’s just a matter of time. We need to keep pushing it and I think sooner rather than later it is going to happen. They won’t win forever.
here here Victor!
So in other words, what your basically saying is that ignorance is bliss. People will believe anything that already affirms there stupid preconcieved notions no matter how unfactual (Is that a word?) the said evidence is.
How to get people to listen to reason and not there “made up facts” is the question we have yet to answer.
It’s interesting that you mention cognitive dissonance. I think that is at the core of what’s going on here. On a certain level when have to learn how to use cognitive dissonance to our advantage, because it’s being used against us constantly. Every time someone’s fear is stoked that we might force ourselves upon children in schools a cognitive dissonance wall is built against all the very sensible logical arguments that no in fact that won’t happen if we are allowed to marry.
Similarly when we talk about coming out and getting to know people and the effect it has it’s an example of our using cognitive dissonance. No one wants to think that their beloved friend/son/mother/uncle/etc. is a horrible person, so we create a cognitive dissonance wall against the lies against homosexuality.
Unfortunately just coming out is too slow, and doesn’t exactly work for a campaign. We need to find a way to really show people who they are hurting. We need to put up our children who are left without protections, and stark harsh pictures of someone crying in a hospital lobby while their loved one dies in a room of a hospital they aren’t allowed into. People need to be shown that, because they won’t want to believe that is something they are supporting. The time to take the gloves off is long since past, so why haven’t the people running these campaigns taken the gloves off?
Nice article. And the key to winning this battle is by making voters more addicted to us than to the traditional religions. Not an easy task, and one that takes place slowly, as one person at a time chooses their children, parents, coworkers, neighbors, etc. over their religion’s conservative moral views. We will win this war by attracting such people and offering them a compelling, emotional reason to choose us. It will NOT be won by screaming or belittling them.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many in the gay community act as if we can win our rights through force. . .and as Maine proved, that simply is not the case.