{"id":7568,"date":"2014-01-02T10:12:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T15:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=7568"},"modified":"2014-01-02T10:13:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T15:13:43","slug":"that-fine-line-between-love-and-hate-and-how-to-cross-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/7568","title":{"rendered":"That Fine Line Between Love And Hate And How To Cross It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was approaching the U.S. Supreme Court building across from the Capital, a year after their awful decision in Hardwick v. Bowers upholding the sodomy laws. For the first time I think ever, I was going to a demonstration not to be the detached photojournalist, but to actually count myself as a participant. \u00a0 And to reenforce that I&#8217;d not brought any of my cameras (a decision I now regret, but so it goes). \u00a0 I&#8217;d arrived via the subway, got off at Union Station and was walking across Constitution Avenue when I noticed there was a police presence already forming up. \u00a0 As I walked past a group of them I heard one policeman, an older black gentleman, saying to his companions, &#8220;I don&#8217;t have no trouble with the older faggots&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It struck me as a grim echo from another time and the bitter mockery of it made my head spin. \u00a0 Yes, yes&#8230;nobody has any trouble with the ones that know their place.<\/p>\n<p>This came across my news stream shortly after U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby struck down Utah&#8217;s anti-gay constitutional amendment denying same-sex couples the right to marry&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/nation\/la-na-utah-gay-marriage-20131231,0,2219002.story\"><strong>Utah weighs impact of ruling allowing gay marriage<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While Utah&#8217;s attorney general strategizes an appeal of the ruling and Mormons take a softer approach in opposing gay marriage, others in the traditionally conservative state predict broader acceptance of the practice nationwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A quote in this leaped out at me&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For Hunt, 44, a bellhop at a swank downtown hotel a few blocks from the LDS church&#8217;s sacred Temple Square, the days have been spent discussing the ruling&#8217;s impact with family and fellow Mormons.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is it the end of the world? No,&#8221; he said, shivering in the 15-degree cold. &#8220;In the end, we have a message to the gay and lesbian people who live among us \u2014 we don&#8217;t hate you, it&#8217;s nothing like that. But we believe what we believe. And our conviction is strong.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>We don&#8217;t hate you&#8230;<\/em> \u00a0 No dear, of course you don&#8217;t. \u00a0 As long as we stay in our place. \u00a0 Bet you don&#8217;t have no trouble with the older faggots either.<\/p>\n<p>How often I heard this crap back when King and Malcolm X were telling white folk they weren&#8217;t shining shoes anymore. <em>We don&#8217;t hate them coloreds, they&#8217;re fine people&#8230;happy cotton pickers&#8230;dance with a lot of rhythm don&#8217;t they?<\/em> We don&#8217;t hate women either. \u00a0 <em>How could you say I hate women&#8230;my god I married a woman&#8230;she&#8217;s a nice little homemaker&#8230;great in the kitchen&#8230;wouldn&#8217;t want her running a business though&#8230;that&#8217;s man&#8217;s work.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s disingenuous self serving sanctimony. \u00a0 Sure you don&#8217;t hate Them. \u00a0 You don&#8217;t hate Them as long as They know Their place and stay in it. \u00a0 It&#8217;s when They won&#8217;t stay in Their place that the hate starts happening. \u00a0 Torrents of it.<\/p>\n<p>Ever wonder at the passions you see suddenly snap out of a bigot when they&#8217;re forced to&#8230;you know&#8230;behave like a bigot? \u00a0 It is because now they have to see what monsters they really are deep down inside. <em>You made me do this to you&#8230;I hate you for making me do this to you&#8230;for making me see what kind of person I really am&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was approaching the U.S. Supreme Court building across from the Capital, a year after their awful decision in Hardwick v. Bowers upholding the sodomy laws. For the first time I think ever, I was going to a demonstration not to be the detached photojournalist, but to actually count myself as a participant. \u00a0 And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[32,20,139],"class_list":["post-7568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thumping-my-pulpit","tag-hate","tag-the-american-gutter","tag-the-bigot-mindset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}