I discovered this today and it’s hilarious. Apparently people think that a blue cross can serve as a competent opposite of the red HRC equals sign for Facebook profile pictures. All in all I don’t care about the social implications of either image, not really, as people count in the secret-ballot voting booth and online it’s merely anecdotal.
What is compelling about this is what the two symbols are being cast as. The HRC has always featured the equals sign as their symbol. Equality. It’s bigger than just the gay/straight thing, it encompasses everything – or at least it should. Everyone is equal, that’s something that is a fundamental part of all of this since the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Hell, even the French put it as part of their rallying cries - Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Many times in America our leaders have written about how we are all equal, from Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson. Really what it comes down to is tolerance, understanding, acceptance all wound up with the idea of equality. Equal before the law, which is what should have been the case all along, but isn’t.
So if the red and pink equals symbol stands for that, then the blue cross stands for its opposite. So that is to say, that the blue cross stands for inequality. So, we could arguably say that the blue cross stands for inequality. That some of us are better, more deserving of benefits than others are and that it’s right and good. The cross is wedged up in there too, so this symbol play has the Church in play as well. We are invited to start expanding the symbols meaning from the probably lighthearted irritation that gave it birth. Through symbols we could establish that for the people who use the blue cross, that they are religious bigots bent on intolerance, hate, and fostering a corrupt system built on pervasive inequality. I mean, if you are going to hang your symbol out there, someone, a lot like me maybe, will come along and start adding extra ornamentation to your symbol. Before you know it you’ve equated religion with hate and, well, logically that would end up as “Fuck Religion ” Would it not?
Well, not that being religious makes any one of us a bad person, it just clouds our thinking and encourages us to be hateful intolerant and unequal. Religion has always been super-compelling for me. It gives otherwise normal people excuses to do horrible things to their fellow man and it’s clothed in a candy-sweet message. It’s the best whammy that humanity has ever played on itself. Instead of encouraging rational thought and discourse we allow a circularly defended book of fairy tales to overwhelm the entire narrative. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, their words are just noises. The response is utterly unbeatable. “The Bible tells me so and that book is correct because it is correct.” So, there you go. No chance at an actual dialogue, and I think that’s what all this is getting around to. There is no dialogue possible with those who are besotted with religion. A book is doing all the thinking. I think that people have been told that the Bible is authoritative for everything for so long that for some the ability to form rational thoughts or engage in critical reasoning is irrevocably lost.
So what is the answer? If a dialogue is impossible then it’s just two monologues and that’s fine. Where those two monologues collide will be a bright spot of conflict. I don’t think we’ll ever be done with conflict, not really. I think it’s a part of being human. Hilarious that we get around to 1984, again. War is Peace. I laugh heartily.
Something else occurs to me now as well, that Christians who supposedly follow the New Testament are the ones so bent out of shape about homosexuality when their book has nothing at all to say about it whatsoever. Christians messiah, Jesus Christ never said word one about homosexuals. The Christians instead are reading from the Jews book, the Torah. Shouldn’t it be that the Jews are the ones that throw the anti-gay fits? I mean, it’s their book after all! Alas, no, Christians see a chance and take it even if it’s irrational. For people who every Sunday carry on about loving and forgiving and all that tripe, when it comes right down to it, even their Pope doesn’t even walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk! It’s fine. Fine mostly because it’s hilariously bad and if you can’t laugh at the absurdity then what do you have? Just hopelessness and tears. It’s gotta be hilarious, it’s gotta be a laugh: A group that has no reason to hate another does because their book is smushed up against another one where the issues are in-context there, to have nothing at all to do with regular people at all but really the jewish priestly class. Yeah, that’s right. Christians have not a single leg to stand on, and really neither do the Jews. Even if the Jews did decide to throw a fit, the historical landmark of the Holocaust is right there waving back at us all from history. Who was right next to the Jews in the Holocaust? Gee, I wonder. So no, we won’t be hearing anything from the Jews on homosexuality.
So what’s the practical take-away from all this insanity? It’s best to insulate yourself against dogma as best you can. If you are already lost to religious fervor, well, you won’t be reading this blog for sure, so for the rest there is only patience and defending oneself against the tyranny of Christianity.
Jesus Christ! Save me from your followers! Please!
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Watching gun nuts trying to use logic, even their own warped logic and watching their points being used against them is both highly entertaining and deeply upsetting. I saw the clip on the Daily Show where John Oliver talks to that gun nut and demonstrates this very point. The way he looked, the way he dismissed everything single-mindedly reminds me of my gun-loving family members. Nothing matters so much as keeping the Second Amendment from being violated. I don’t think they have basic human empathy and I think it works much like how conservatives change their minds when their children come out as gay, when it comes to gay marriage. Perhaps, and I don’t actively wish this on anyone, but there is a part of me that wonders if these gun nuts would be so intensely resistant to gun control if someone they loved died in a massacre where a background check would have revealed that a mentally ill shooter bought one gun online and the other at a gun show. Their dead child would still be alive if they had learned to compromise on at least background checks. Alas, it’s too late for their dead imaginary child.
