Although I support gay marriage, I don't feel strongly enough about it to plead passionately for it on these boards.
However, in response to Terry, I feel the need to talk about something else, which is the hatred and threats that gay people often meet from the rest of society.
First of all, Terry, I strongly disapprove of the kind of demonstrations that gay people in America have apparently carried out against churches just a few days ago. Personally I think it is plain wrong to disturb a service, and I disapprove of demonstrators who allow the actual message they want to bring to the forefront to be drowned out by their own nasty behaviour. (And I can't stand demonstrators who cover up their faces.)
Still, if you compare the kind of violence that gay people have carried out against churches with the violence that gay people have suffered at the hands of straight people - well, I don't doubt for a second that it's the gay people who have borne the brunt of the violence.
I'll post a link to an article from 1999. It's in Swedish, so you can't read it, but it's about the murder of a Swedish ice hockey player, a gay man, in 1995:
Ice hockey player murdered by Nazi The ice hockey player, Peter Karlsson, made a pass at a young man outside a bar. Unfortunately for Karlsson, the young man was not only a Nazi who hated gays, but he was also armed with a knife. The Nazi stabbed Peter Karlsson 64 times. Can you imagine?
Sixty-four times!!! I pretended that I held a knife in my hand, and then I lifted my hand and brought it down as if I was stabbing someone. I did it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again and again and again and again and....
How much do you have to hate a person to stab him sixty-four times?
This murderer, the Nazi, was nineteen years old. Mostly for that reason, he got a reduced sentence, eight years in prison. But the judge also ruled that it was necessary to consider the insult the young man had suffered, when the homosexual man had propositioned him. The judge felt that the young man had somehow had a reason to stab another human being sixty-four times, the reason being that his victim was gay and had made a pass at him.
I find this case totally, completely shocking. The only good thing I think you can say about it is that today no murderer in Sweden would get a reduced sentence because he felt insulted by a gay person who had propositioned him.
Ann
