Cartoon in a coalmine

[avram]

Mike Luckovitch sums up the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment in one simple, effective image.

Andrew Sullivan’s been passing on email he’s been getting on the FMA matter. Here’s an interesting thought:

Jews used to be the canary people. Jews still play that role but today, even more so, that role is played by gays. You can judge a party or a leader by how he treats this group, the one group it is still safe to hate in America.

Comments

[avram]

I’ve run into the theory that there are two classic bigotry templates: The target group is either animalistic (they’re brutal, violent, stupid, can’t hold down a job, their men want to rape our women) or over-intellectual (they’re shrewd, clever, will always cheat you in a bargain, can’t be trusted, will steal our jobs, their men are sexually inadequate).

Gays are getting an odd mix. It’s mostly the over-intellectual, but they can get the sex bits from either template, and be portrayed as sexually inadequate (the men are effeminate, the women unattractive) or as hyper-sexual (the men have ten different partners a night and want to rape your children, the women, well, most straight men don’t mind thinking about attractive lesbians).

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Antisemitism, classically, has always drawn from both the bigotry wells, and modern anti-Asian bigotry does as well (though there was always an element of it: the bigot-pattern seemed to be to fear the one smart Asian in charge of endless, filthy, yellow hordes).

And of course, our canary status is still unchanged. It's been a long time in America since a major motion picture could propagate the deicide charge and still be so widely accepted.

[avram]

If you meet the Savior in the road...