 |
| What homophobia has wrought. Battered and beaten: Damian Furtch |
With god on their side and arrogance in their hearts, two degenerates brutally attacked and beat 26-year-old Damian Furtch in the West Village section of Manhattan last Sunday in what authorities believe was a gay bashing.
Let us be clear here: None of this would be possible if churches, synagogues, and temples all across America did not preach, by the hour, that homosexuality is a blight against divinity. None of this would be possible if narrow, pathological, patriarchal ideas about masculinity and the Myth of the Cowboy did not infect the American psyche. None of this would be possible if Americans were not such cowards.
Can you not hear the apologists? "I don't hate gay people. I would never beat anyone up. I would never condone what happened. I think what happened is sad, but there's nothing I can do about it."
The mistake is believing that hatred is necessary for homophobia to flourish when all that is needed is complicity.
And since, it seems, we cannot trust most heterosexuals--especially the religious ones or ones with even a tiny bit of power--to acknowledge the injustice and do something about it, I believe it is time that we dealt with this on our own.
So what are we waiting for?