Another Day, Another Shooting.

This time it was at the offices of the Family Research Council, noted by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a homophobic hate-group whose campaigns against equality for same-sex individuals and couples pretty much guarantee a full house at a game of bigot bingo.  Interestingly I have noticed that as the lefty dens of iniquity I frequent cover the story, they are at pains to point out that no matter what they might think of the FRC, shooting them is wrong.  No shit!

Obviously much of this is to head-off accusations, from both the right-wing and the lazy, centrist media that can't think beyond binary because they are soulless robots, that the left must be pleased to see their enemies get mowed down or even had something to do with inciting it.  And naturally, Fox News and co are drumming up the idea that this attack was inspired by the SPLC declaring the Family Research Council a hate-group, which apparently just opened the door for somebody to think "oh, that means they have to be killed".

Naturally Fox are being enormous hypocrites, since they decry any responsibility of themselves or the right-wing echo chamber for putting the idea in people's heads that doctors or Mexicans or brown people are so dangerous that they have to be stopped - even if they literally do call somebody a murderer repeatedly on television and wring their hands about the fact that nobody is saving innocent babies.  But they have something of a point with the SPLC vs FRC issue.

Words have meanings.  Words symbolise things.  And when you call an obstetrician a murderer, you're saying they are killing innocent human beings repeatedly and getting away with it.  You're putting the idea out there that a mass murderer is operating in the neighbourhood unchecked.  If somebody takes you at your word, and they have the means and opportunity to stop the slaughter, what do you expect to happen?  Similarly, when you call an organisation dedicated to imposing selected parts of their particular dogma on people whose lifestyle they disagree with "a hate-group", you are expressing the concept that this organisation hates homosexuals and wants to interfere in their lives and make them worse.  Which is pretty damn accurate, as it happens.  The religious right have got to stop hiding from the terms bigotry and hate, because they are bigoted against homosexuals and they do hate them.  Their words say it and their actions say it.  Maybe they should look in another big, thick book for a change - the dictionary.

The Southern Poverty Law Center's description of the Family Research Council is accurate, because trying to make people's lives worse because you believe they're sinners is hate.  They have said this group hates gay people because this group hates gay people.  They have not said this group is trying to kill gay people, which makes claims of their classification of the FRC as a hate-group being the inspiration for somebody walking in and shooting at people somewhat hollow.  Even if the perpetrator were to cite the SPLC, their violent reaction to what the SPLC actually said is not supportable.  It doesn't follow in any real sense.  Again, words have meanings, and torturing something they didn't mean out of them is just as dishonest as trying to pretend they don't apply in situations that quite clearly warrant them.

Now before we go back to talking about writing (going well by the way, I have a honest-to-goodness novel in editing right now), here is your moment of zen: