"Bigot!"
"Pardon me?"
"You heard me. You bigot."
"No, I meant what did you say before that?"
The young man blinked and helpfully recounted, "Before I called you a Bigot? Well, I said that it is wrong to discriminate and you hate me just because I'm gay."
"I don't know you well enough to feel strongly about you one way or another."
"Right. All you know about me is that I'm gay. That's why you hate me."
"As said, I don't know you and I do not hate you. In fact, until you told me, I did not know you identified as gay. And that would not be a reason to hate someone, anyway."
"Yeh? Then what is the reason that makes you hate me?"
"You keep saying that you feel hated. I do not feel strongly about you. I certainly do not feel hatred. We do not know each other. But you seem to feel sure about me. Why is that?"
"I know that you are against marriage equality. You bigot!"
"What else do you know about me?"
"I know people like you. Your people hate my people."
I sat quietly for a moment. He had stepped closer and now stood over me waiting uncertainly. I leaned forward and looked up into his pained eyes. Slowly I offerred him my hand.
[To be continued.]
- ~ - ~ -
This is part of a series in a composite portrayal of numerous real encounters with proponents of the SSM idea.
Comment Policy
Chairm,
ReplyDeleteOnly online for me, never been called a bigot to my face. People know enough that isn't where I'm coming from. I just come off as a little more eccentric or unrealistically in my idealism with my passion for marriage.
Renee, people who know where I am coming from also do not call me a bigot, however, in this encounter he and I met for the first time. Like on the internet, it began with his msunderstanding of the actual disagreement.
ReplyDeleteAs I later learned it was not entirely a chance meeting and I was kind of ambushed by this fellow and his friends. I was sitting at the edge of the fence around the memorial garden just after Sunday Mass. It was a sweltering summer day and I had been waiting for my one of my granddaughters who'd give me a ride home. Her kids were off some distance chatting playfully with their teacher and one of our priests.
Fortunately my wife was not there. And I do not mean fortunately for her. Heh.
This young fellow arrived along with three buddies one of whom had recognized me from an event during the CA marriage amendment election. The only tactical advantage I enjoyed was that I rested under the shade of a big old tree and they stood in the bright sunshine.
What happened next was shocking but not unexpected once I realized that this was a more or less staged confrontation. I will probably go into some of the details much later in this series of blogposts. He and I are on better terms because he learned where I am coming from. But that took effort on both our parts. That investment can pay off in surprising ways.
Age and experience makes a difference in these things. I move slower and can be very frank in the way that I talk to aggressive people; tha makes me an easy target but I know what we all know and cannot not know. I have found that this helps both persons in such circumstances.
Thanks for commenting on this, Renee, I hopethe rest of the series will interest you too.
Chairm