It's not homophobic if your heart is in it
Filed by: Alex Blaze
December 15, 2008 1:30 PM
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/12/its_not_homophobic_if_your_heart_is_in_i.phpThe right's in overdrive to construct an image of queer people that's a violent threat to anyone who would cross our paths. It was the most obvious in that full-page "No Mob Veto" ad put out by a group of not-just-anti-gay bigots, and it's growing in its volume. They want for the first thing people think of when they think of queer participation in politics is violence. It's a silencing technique, because deep in their authoritarian lizard brains is an impulse to get anyone who disagrees with them to STFU.
I was going to write up a response to Steve Lopez's recent LA Times column on the protests of El Coyote restaurant (whose owner, Margie Christoffersen, donated $100 to the Yes on 8 campaign), but Jim Burroway already responded to the facts. The column is absolutely ridiculous, mentioning that Christoffersen is crying because of the mean gays about a dozen times. One gets the impression that she's a frail woman (who has owned and operated a difficult business for decades and donates to contentious political causes) who's in shambles because she exercised her right to participate in democracy.
It's easy to get sarcastic here, because Lopez changes some real facts (saying that cops were showing up in riot gear, which Jim disputes) to make the situation more dramatic and presents Christoffersen as such an incredibly weak person one wonders how she even manages to stand up each morning. But Lopez got his point through: the gays made a girl cry.
