Our favorite game, though, was Smear the Queer, which was giving a football to someone, then everyone else–6-10 of us–trying to tackle the person with the football. Once they were down, they released it, and the game repeated. I had strong legs even then, and they called me “Big Bad”, which is quite comical considering I was 8 or so. I have always been physically stubborn in some circumstances though. There are time I will not quit. Over the long haul, bet on me quitting. Over the short haul, my pain tolerance is staggering.
But I wanted to comment on the obvious facts that, by now, 1) this game is no longer allowed on most playgrounds, even among the schools which have them; 2) most schools no longer have staff nurses, as we did, for the mostly boys who would get injured just about every day at recess; 3) The NAME for this is verboten. I have heard this game called Bag the Fag too.
Now, at that age, in that world, I did not have the slightest idea what a homosexual was. At that time, where I grew up, I would sometimes read in the newspaper about them busting a “bathhouse” and arresting people–sometimes cops, sometimes local government officials, all a scandal. But this whole in-door, out-door thing was a mystery for me for a very long time.
The point I would like to make here on this topic is that OF COURSE it is a good thing that kids no longer call that game by that name. I think it is bad, if it is true, that they no longer play something like it, but that we have stopped equating gay with bad is good. This IS progress. That gay sex is no longer illegal, such that bathhouses are raided and everyone caught naked in the shower arrested for “sodomy”, is good.
In my less angry moments, in my less defensive moments, I have to concede progress has indeed been made. So called “Progressives” have engendered progress, real progress.
But what I have to insist on is that emotionally, I never feel that helping actual, real human beings is the goal. Because whenever they win one victory, they go for another. Whenever they have undermined one bad underpinning assumption of our society they go for another, one which might well be good. Witness, as an example, the ruckus over the claim that “bourgeois”values have some merit.
Here is the thing: we need to be able to adjust our outrage, temper it proportionately. Be mildly angry at mild insults, and greatly angry at great insults. But given how craven and beaten most people are in most segments of society, very few dare great insults, so the people who NEED rage to justify their existences visit rage on them anyway.
In such an atmosphere, no rational proportionality is possible. No reconciliation and negotiation of opposing or at least differing views is possible.
The all or nothing tactics and viewpoints of the Left make emotional intelligence impossible. They make understanding impossible. They make it impossible to be meek when needed, and tough when needed.
Conservatives–Liberals, to be clear, who retain some fondness for rational discourse, civic mindedness, principle, and civility–are forced into pitched battles or silence. Silence has largely failed, so they show up at the “discussion” armed for bear, and quite prepared to deal out the same viciousness they expect will be the opening parley by the Left.
All of this is stupid. Preventing this outcome should be the POINT of a college education, even a high school education, even a grade school education.
It is good that we no longer tolerate open bashing of homosexuals. It is not good that questioning, say, the appropriateness of Christians being forced, at the point of bankruptcy, to bake cakes for gays who simply want to make them squirm, has become something which itself carries vast social penalties.
I want freedom. My feeling is that if somebody is not bothering you, then you have no right to bother them. If gays want to have huge orgies in bath houses, how is that your problem? If someone wants to cross dress, how is that your problem, unless and until they want to use the women’s bathroom? Etc.
Stating a Randian principle roughly, because I am not one of her cult members: if someone uses no force against you, you have no right to use force against them. Period. Full Stop. This is a truly Liberal politics, as I see it.
We can all get along. This is absolutely true. Ask yourself, then: Cui bono when we argue?
Then look around. Then look at me. Then decide who the real criminals are.