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Quietly seething
I live and work in the South now. I'm a Damn Yankee to my coworkers, though they are polite about it. I know perfectly well that my lifestyle, were I dumb enough to talk about it at work, would label me a freak and a deviant.
Right. So, I'm sitting here quietly sick and furious at myself after the discussion that was underway when I came in. NYC has opened a high school for GLBT students. The consensus in this department, with NOT ONE DISSENTING VOICE, is apparently that not only is this ridiculous, but "those people" should take the consequences of their choice of sexuality, and having children exposed to homosexuals will only corrupt them and cause them to be homosexual. Further (and coming from a half dozen black women, this seems the cream of it to me), "People should live with the laws as they are and not try to get new ones made to give them any more rights." They consider themselves very progressive for allowing "those people" to do what they want in their own homes, as long as they don't have kids or in any way affect the upbringing of any kids, since everyone knows that's what makes kids gay, and that's a terrible thing to any right thinking Christian.
I'm not making any of this up, and I don't know if I'm angrier at them, or at myself for sitting here and shutting up. Mostly I feel sick. I genuinely think that if I made the comments I made above, it would start a shitstorm that would end in me apologizing for everything I said (that I believed, and that would make me more sick than just not talking), or being fired for making trouble and being "racist".
I like these people, though I was considering just yesterday how none of them really feel like friends. Some of this was coming from the one person here that I seriously respect. I knew I didn't fit here - I had not had my face slammed into it quite so hard before, though.
Right. So, I'm sitting here quietly sick and furious at myself after the discussion that was underway when I came in. NYC has opened a high school for GLBT students. The consensus in this department, with NOT ONE DISSENTING VOICE, is apparently that not only is this ridiculous, but "those people" should take the consequences of their choice of sexuality, and having children exposed to homosexuals will only corrupt them and cause them to be homosexual. Further (and coming from a half dozen black women, this seems the cream of it to me), "People should live with the laws as they are and not try to get new ones made to give them any more rights." They consider themselves very progressive for allowing "those people" to do what they want in their own homes, as long as they don't have kids or in any way affect the upbringing of any kids, since everyone knows that's what makes kids gay, and that's a terrible thing to any right thinking Christian.
I'm not making any of this up, and I don't know if I'm angrier at them, or at myself for sitting here and shutting up. Mostly I feel sick. I genuinely think that if I made the comments I made above, it would start a shitstorm that would end in me apologizing for everything I said (that I believed, and that would make me more sick than just not talking), or being fired for making trouble and being "racist".
I like these people, though I was considering just yesterday how none of them really feel like friends. Some of this was coming from the one person here that I seriously respect. I knew I didn't fit here - I had not had my face slammed into it quite so hard before, though.
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But losing your job over speaking up is something you should only risk if your speaking up can do some good. It doesn't sound like this is the case here. If you think any of your coworkers have latent clues about this, you can talk with those ones privately. If not, you're not going to change any minds anyway, so speaking up for the sake of abstract defense won't do any good for anyone. (If, on the other hand, they were in the process of actually abusing someone, as opposed to just talking crap, that would be different.)
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