Humans Are Funny Animals

Many detractors of the gay rights movement have spent the past thirty years or more criticizing it as somehow asking for "special rights".

George Orwell in his masterpiece "Animal Farm" which was a pertinent statement on the turmoil of post fascist western society and differing political ideologies (and almost a prequel to "1984") stated "All animals are equal - but some animals are more equal than other animals".

One can see warning signs of a harsh resentment and bitter distaste and disrespect for the humanity of other people in statements like "gay rights are 'special' rights". Often the fights in the past against slavery and racial prejudice are compared with the modern struggle for GLBT equal rights and all manner of interesting comparisons are drawn. There are in fact many similarities.

• Both movements struggled for the human rights and equality of specific groups in society.
• Both movements asked for EQUAL rights, and not special rights.
• Both movements encountered a bitter resistance from a sector of society as well as from organized religion, using religious rhetorical argument to justify the continuation of the human rights abuses in question.

However, it is an argument unique to the GLBTI fight for equality that opponents of equality and human rights for GLBTI people claim our need for equality is somehow demanding "special" rights over their own.

Those supporting the continuation of the abuse of GLBTI people's human rights claim "Homosexuality is not a human rights issue" but "a sin issue".  

 

Are we not human then? 

 

This line of thought steps dangerously close to the ground trodden by those who justify genocide by claiming their victims were "not human" - but compared them instead to "cockroaches" and "vermin" - something which has already been done on many past occasions - amid the increasing calls to commit a Pink Genocide, especially in African countries where hatred of GLBT people is rife. As for calling it a "sin issue" - this is simply a symptom of narrow minded ignorant people trying to force their own shallow and plastic beliefs on the rest of the world.

As far as I am concerned this idiotic and particularly nasty way of thinking can be stopped in its tracks with one small observation -

"Did Jesus ever condemn GLBT people? No? Then why do you?"

It would seem that like the "ex-gay" movement, their basis for condemning people's natural sexuality and gender identity is based upon nothing more than flimsy religious rhetoric.Homosexuality is only NOT acceptable to the bigot element in society, those who hate others for being different to themselves and who seem to challenge their narrow ideas about the "order of the universe" and therefore pose some sort of threat to them and their convenient percieved position of power.

Many support them out of ignorance and even worse, gratuitous ignorance.

And yet it has all been done before, and round and round the circle we go - a vicious circle, a circle of death.

Still they claim GLBT are sinners who "choose" to be GLBT - and still we keep rubing their bigot noses in the scientific facts that blows their bigotry out of the water - and still they revel in their hatred and persecution of those different to themselves.

"Gay rights are 'special' rights!" They claim.

I find it quite fascinating that the people who make these claims, do so in the face of clear evidence which shows that GLBTI people DO NOT in fact have equal civil rights - but rights substantially LESS than those who make this claim.

What are we to deduce from this?

That the people calling our drive to attain equality with them are in fact clinging to their own superior position in society - and thus, their own current SPECIAL RIGHTS?

I would call that an accurate assessment.

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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.

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