Today I went to buy some food and, as I was loading my purchases into my car I was approached by a young man with a petition he wanted me to sign.
The young man was good-looking and clean-cut—virtually Mormon-missionary clean-cut. The petition, it seems, was to nominate delegates to a Republican nominating convention.
I pointed out that I did not live in that area and, what's more, I'm not a Republican, so I didn't think he wanted my signature.
Of course I could have left the matter there. He wasn't insistent or anything. But, as my bags were going into the car trunk, I felt compelled to express a wish about where, at least sort of generically, I wished Republicans would go, because "that's where they all belong, in my opinion."
Well, was it gratuitous of me to say that? Probably my comment was not in the interests of fostering civil discourse. But consider this: People live in homogeneous neighborhoods. They surround themselves with people who think as they do, and they get lulled into being unaware that real, flesh-and-blood people might hold opinions very divergent from theirs. They also need to see that those who hold views diametrically different from their own do not have horns and tails.
He didn't ask me why I thought that. I almost wish he had, because if he had, I would have said, "I am a gay man and as a gay man, Republicans are my enemies, and they have shown that they are, over and over and over."
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment