I wanted to keep to keep a safe distance from the polemics and the politics, and I've tried. But this is too much. So now it seems this blog has come full circle and I am back where I started - fuming over the Have Your Say pages of the BBC news website. But hopefully this will be just a one off, a very angry interlude, a rant - if you will.
So. Nutshell. Ricky Martin announces he's gay. The BBC tentatively inquires - "Does coming out affect careers?". Discuss.
Some responses:
"Today, being gay is no big deal. It is legal and accepted (except by some churches).
All this "coming out" business is getting sooo boring...."
"Like we hadn't already guessed. Who cares anyway."
"Those of us, from gay rights campaigners to complete bigots,who still care about a persons sexuality still make too big a deal of it.
The rest of us, maybe even the majority, could'nt give a fig what others get up to."
"What a ridiculous HYS. Bad enough you printed such a non-story in the first place.....now you want us to discuss the non-story?"
"Why do people think that a lot of us care what someones sexual orientation is. Its like an announcement that no-one really gives too much of a fig about. His music was boring before the annoucement imho and will probably continue to be middle of the road durge now this oh so major announcement has been made.
Oh just for the record Im hetrosexual, wow, thats interesting, but you really didn't need to know that did you?"
We're still in the first ten posts, by the way, no selective digging around required here.
FIRST OFF - Fig - really? Is this the BBC's automated way of correcting profanity, or is linguistic propriety making a comeback?
Second - Answer the damn question! Unless I'm mistaken, it wasn't phrased in such a way as to sollicit personal opinions about gay people in general - re-read the question and then look me in the eye and tell me the answer isn't obviously YES!
SHOCKING.
These responses from supposedly educated, intelligent and perhaps well-intentioned BBC news readers leave me in absolute consternation.
I am at a complete loss as to why people so apathetic to the issue bother to comment it in such numbers to voice their apathy when someone has clearly just left an identical response before them. Maybe they don't bother reading the rest of the posts. Good for them.
NO. Of course we don't need to know you're a goddamn heterosexual. Because being a heterosexual is not going to get you harassed in Poland, beaten up in Istanbul, or executed in Uganda!
IS that not worth perhaps a moment's discussion without people getting enraged about their time being wasted or being interrogated about such insignificant matters?
Ricky Martin, incidentally, happens to come from the predominantly Roman Catholic country of Puerto Rico, and I presume a large proportion if not the majority of his record sales were from Latin America - also a Roman Catholic stronghold in places, or so I hear. MAYBE just MAYBE an eyebrow or two will be raised. Not by BBC readers of course, because they are far, far above all that trivial nonsense.
And most of the irate respondents seem to have overlooked the fact that the question was not even about Martin! It was about the repercussions of coming out in general, which clearly has an impact in the regions I've just mentioned.
Not in the UK? Tell that to Jan Moir.
The worst kind of homophobia is the kind from patronising bigots, like Alain Soral, telling gay people they are not allowed to complain or even say anything related to their sexuality because "nobody cares" about it anymore. Any discrimination is all in your imagination because we couldn't give a "fig" what you get up to in your private lives. You'd love to think we have a problem with you - but we don't!
WHich, while we're at it, mirrors the worst, most insidious kind of misogyny or sexism. Put on the blinkers and ignore the bigger picture kind of tactic. Don't be an idiot - just because you're above caring doesn't mean people couldn't possibly feel discriminated against in any form, because, crazy as it might sound, you are not the world.
And what I find most nauseating is the ARROGANCE of people who aren't even in the position to make a meaningful comment to fume about how uneccesary the discussion is! It reminds me of the response of the white people in Jane Elliot's "Blue eyes" experiment in the UK. Along the lines of - this is pointless, there is no more racism in the UK, why are we even having this debate, etc. Oh and by the way, I happen to be white. While the Afro-Carribean lady in the corner fidgeted and said nothing, or occasionally dared to venture a cross-word which I couldn't make out because the indignant white folks were speaking over her so loudly.
Walk a mile in my shoes, and then tell me I am not entitled to complain. But in the meantime, and I've said this before, DON'T TELL US WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT.
