marriage equality
the whole "pro marriage equality" thing floating around is pretty interesting because it feels very one-sided.
on both my fb feed and g+ feed during the presidential race i had both sides of the obama/romney camps willing to speak their minds. After the gun violence thing became a huge thing, i had pro and anti gun people willing to speak their minds. when it comes to the state of our economy and how to fix it or how good or poor of a job our current government is handling it, i have people on both sides willing to speak their mind.
but for this support gay rights thing? I only see one side. There's that red equals sign littered everywhere on my streams, but there's no equivalent sign for the opposing viewpoint anywhere to be seen.
and to me that's very odd because it's not as if there isn't a large group of people opposed to the idea of marriage equality. if that were true then it wouldn't be such a hot topic in the first place. i'm sure that there are a lot of religious conservatives and other right-wingers and traditionalists in my fb friends list at least (my g+ circles tend to be much more liberal-minded as a whole or live in countries where homosexuality isn't an issue anymore) that still believe that being gay is wrong.
So what is it that about this particular issue that makes them feel afraid to speak up about it at this point in our culture? my initial thought was, "it's the equivalent of bullying. people who believe that being gay is a sin or a condition that needs to be fixed don't feel like that they can post that belief because they would become immediately blasted by most of their friends who are clearly on the side of marriage equality. They feel suppressed as an ever-increasing minority, feel like they'd be bullied for their belief."
i was trying to see it that way as a devil's-advocate idea clearly, but the more i thought about it, to call it 'fear of bullying' didn't feel the right slant. Now, i equate it to a sort of, well, let's call it "guiltless embarrassment". People don't want to admit or broadcast their belief that they don't believe in marriage equality in the same way that people don't want to admit that they watch or like porn. There's that group of people that are embarrassed to admit that they get off on porn - it's not necessarily that they think it's wrong or something to feel guilty about, but it's a controversial and taboo topic and therefore not something that would get dropped casually. But they feel more comfortable with admitting it once they're assured that who they're admitting it to will accept it and/or like porn the same way that they do. In a room full of 10,000 people, no one wants to be the first to raise the affirmative hand to the question of, "who jacked/jilled off to porn today?" even if much more than a handful could. But once that first person _does_ raise their hand, the next is willing to and the next &c until a much more truthful (but still not complete) statistic of hands is raised.
This feels like that. The people who don't believe in marriage equality don't feel guilty or ashamed about their belief, but they feel embarrassed about it and not supported, and they're not going to be the first ones to raise their virtual hands.
And while even as a LGBT advocate i don't think i would feel comfortable with it all if i felt like it was the bullying thing, i _do_ think that the guiltless embarrassment thing and the unwillingness to put forward that opinion strongly is a good thing because it shows quite a reversal from the attitude of it all however many decades ago when it was the LGBT community that felt like _they_ were the ones that didn't have support and didn't want to be the first ones to raise their hand.
but it's interesting. i mean, it's not like i don't want people to feel free to have the opposing perspective exactly, even if that perspective feels rather baffling. i'm not sure exactly what it is that i want in the situation. maybe for there to be faction of people that can feel free to believe what they believe about it and feel supported by the people in their circle, but for the rest of the nation and world to view them like most people view the KKK in this day and age - out of touch and a bunch of nut cases.