My friend Craig (of yes, i am) has officially entered his Angry Bitter Gay Ex-Mormon phase. We all saw the signs: the growing circle of gay/ex-mo friends he was amassing; his forceful blog posts speaking out against religion, Mormonism and homophobia; his increasing frustration with his conservative Mormon acquaintances and their stubborn insistence that he respect their beliefs in silence; the friction with his parents and siblings; and his attendance at the Exmormon Foundation Conference this last weekend. Angry! Gay! Bitter!
A couple weeks ago he finally snapped. After a frustrating Facebook chat on the subject of gay rights/marriage with a former roommate—the Mormoniest of all of his Mormony BYU roommates—Craig went on a Facebook rampage, cutting his virtual ties with all the closet bigots of his acquaintance. He is no longer connected to anyone who has posted a “Yes on 8!” status, joined a Prop 8 group, or publicly sided with the “Protect Marriage: One Man, One Woman” cause.
When he told me about his crusade I made sympathetic noises, because of course he is angry, of course he is frustrated, and you have to do something or you’ll explode. But as much as I sympathized, I didn’t join him, even as I watched more and more of my Facebook friends line up behind Proposition 8. I figured information was bound to flow both ways; it was worth it to stay connected to these acquaintances and bear the sting of their small virtual betrayals, as long as they were willing to put up with my 500 “queerosexual” status updates on National Coming Out Day.
Well, a few days ago one of my distant, conservative Mormon acquaintances posted a long, incoherent rant in support of Proposition 8 on her Facebook profile, in which she cribbed heavily from Mormon-run preservemarriage.com. To whit: she had at first been against the proposition, but when she found out that it wouldn’t take any rights away from homosexuals, and that gay marriage would put her own religious rights in danger!!!, she knew she had to speak out.
Do not even get me started on the subject of religious rights.
Oops. Too late!
The United States is one of the most religious industrialized nations in the world. The overwhelming majority of Americans identifies not just as religious but as Christian, and the insidious idea that America is a “Christian nation” is rooted even in many non-religious breasts. “American” implies Christian, god-fearing, wholesome, Bible-believing, salt-of-the-earth and (mostly) white and straight. By their very nature, non-Christian, non-white and non-straight citizens are marginalized as non-American. So please explain to me how, in a nation like the one I live in today, religious rights are in any danger… from anyone but Christians?
That’s right. A certain subset of the Christian majority is trying its level best to do away with the religious rights of the minority, by voting a specific set of moral and religious views not just into law but into the state and federal constitutions. This is not just. This is not equitable. This is not moral.
It is also not true, by the way, that Proposition 8 would not take any rights away from California homosexuals. The most obvious right it would remove is the right of same-sex couples to marry (that’s the whole point of the proposition, of course), but it would also push homosexuals another step back from achieving full equality under the law and in society. These are not trivial losses, trivial wounds, trivial semantic games.
When I responded to my Facebook friend’s post, politely pointing out the flaws in her argument and raising the concerns I have noted above, she deleted my comment and sent it back to me, basically saying she didn’t want it polluting her Pro-8 Facebook page. But she still wanted to be my friend, because she remembered me as being cool from college, exclamation point, heart, lol.
After I sent a final response explaining why her friendship was no longer wanted or needed, Craig had to show me how to defriend her. He’s had a lot of experience with that lately, fortunately for me.
I won’t be going on any kind of friend-list-cleansing rampage of my own, but let this serve as a notice to any of my so-called Facebook friends who support Prop 8: before you post that ill-considered anti-homosexual rant on your Facebook page, do me the favor of de-friending me first so it doesn’t pollute my Facebook experience. It’s what a true friend would do.
