> That's not true. You're stretching a line between two distant things in hopes of having a nice neat world of bigots on one side, and everyone else on the other. "You're either with us, or you're with the bigots".
I'm not, I assure you. Especially when your subsequent example is:
> In your world, I'm a bigot because I HATE that overly-camp, sledge-hammer decorative approach with men in g-strings running around in heels and pink fluffy decorations everywhere and don't forget the awful gay dance music. That's what it is to be gay? I don't think so. The mardi gras (at least the one where I live) needs to die. But I can't say that because I'll be "anti-gay". I'm not anti-gay, I just hate the annual celebration of the "gay community" by erecting giant penises on floats and broadcasting it all on live TV.
You're entitled to that belief. It doesn't (necessarily) make you a bigot. Lots of people hate annoying parades - I myself found myself trapped a few months back trying to get across 5th avenue while the gay pride parade was going on and was incredibly annoyed.
So there we go - we share a common ground of annoyance towards loud, over-the-top parades.
But I presume that if another group had a similar parade, you'd be equally annoyed - that it's not the fact that it's gay people having the parade, it's the fact the parade is loud, decadent, over the top, with awful dance music (and giant penises on floats).
That's what makes it different than the example I gave. Your example (annoying, over the top parades with penis floats) is more akin to people who are against marriage entirely - they don't want anyone to get married, gay, straight, black, white, whoever. That's a position I can respect, even if I don't agree with it, because it's at least equally applied.
Gay marriage, though, is a situation where you have one group of people having a bigger, broader set of rights than the other group of people. That's a bigoted view of the world - for some reason these people over here can get married, but these other people over here can't.
If we were to apply it to your example, if you were only annoyed at the mardi gras because there were gay people involved - if straight people, puerto ricans, professional basketball players, whoever, threw the exact same parade and you were fine with it, then you'd be bigoted.
I'm all about a level playing field. Either everyone gets to get married, or no one does. Either everyone gets to have a loud, annoying parade with giant penis floats, or no one should.
Your example just doesn't apply here. I'm not dividing the world into neat examples of bigots and not, because people can have a broad range of emotions about a wide variety of things. And certainly, you can dislike aspects of gay culture without being bigoted as long as you'd dislike those aspects if they were present in other cultures. But when you single out one specific group as having diminished rights compared to the others, that's some level of bigotry for sure.
"people who are against marriage entirely - they don't want anyone to get married...That's a position I can respect"
If my position on gay marriage sits firmly atop my less than enthusiastic position of marriage in general, the burden of convincing any participant in the debate that my position is not fuelled by hate towards gays is not on me.
In other words, if you go into the debate primed with the objective of weeding out homophobic views by aligning anyone against gay marriage with homophobia, you've de-railed the debate before it's begun.
Many people don't care either way and are sick of the gay marriage debate taking up so much attention. It's not a pressing matter for the world in my opinion, and I don't sign petitions when hassled at the train station about it. I also don't sign petitions against gay marriage either, but I will enter a debate here online about it.
Some believe that "marriage" in and of itself doesn't need to be extended beyond heterosexual couples. When asked why, an increasing reason might be this collective foot-stomping campaign insisting that anything reserved for heterosexual couples must also be extended to gay couples or else there is some moral corruption happening. I don't believe there's a corruption of morality in reserving "marriage" to heterosexual couples. A substantial part of that position comes from my view on marriage in general - its origins, its contractual formula, its roots in the church, even the cost of marriage and the industry around marriage... It's not something built for 'expandability'... But anyway, thanks for replying, I'm sure the debate will continue.
I'm not, I assure you. Especially when your subsequent example is:
> In your world, I'm a bigot because I HATE that overly-camp, sledge-hammer decorative approach with men in g-strings running around in heels and pink fluffy decorations everywhere and don't forget the awful gay dance music. That's what it is to be gay? I don't think so. The mardi gras (at least the one where I live) needs to die. But I can't say that because I'll be "anti-gay". I'm not anti-gay, I just hate the annual celebration of the "gay community" by erecting giant penises on floats and broadcasting it all on live TV.
You're entitled to that belief. It doesn't (necessarily) make you a bigot. Lots of people hate annoying parades - I myself found myself trapped a few months back trying to get across 5th avenue while the gay pride parade was going on and was incredibly annoyed.
So there we go - we share a common ground of annoyance towards loud, over-the-top parades.
But I presume that if another group had a similar parade, you'd be equally annoyed - that it's not the fact that it's gay people having the parade, it's the fact the parade is loud, decadent, over the top, with awful dance music (and giant penises on floats).
That's what makes it different than the example I gave. Your example (annoying, over the top parades with penis floats) is more akin to people who are against marriage entirely - they don't want anyone to get married, gay, straight, black, white, whoever. That's a position I can respect, even if I don't agree with it, because it's at least equally applied.
Gay marriage, though, is a situation where you have one group of people having a bigger, broader set of rights than the other group of people. That's a bigoted view of the world - for some reason these people over here can get married, but these other people over here can't.
If we were to apply it to your example, if you were only annoyed at the mardi gras because there were gay people involved - if straight people, puerto ricans, professional basketball players, whoever, threw the exact same parade and you were fine with it, then you'd be bigoted.
I'm all about a level playing field. Either everyone gets to get married, or no one does. Either everyone gets to have a loud, annoying parade with giant penis floats, or no one should.
Your example just doesn't apply here. I'm not dividing the world into neat examples of bigots and not, because people can have a broad range of emotions about a wide variety of things. And certainly, you can dislike aspects of gay culture without being bigoted as long as you'd dislike those aspects if they were present in other cultures. But when you single out one specific group as having diminished rights compared to the others, that's some level of bigotry for sure.