Tuesday, 06 November 2012
So, last night, I posted on Facebook reminding people to vote No on the marriage amendment proposal. I said that if anyone planned to vote Yes, then please provide me with a good reason why you are doing so, otherwise please delete me as your “friend.”
I’m not sure why I do this stuff. This might be tough to believe, but I really hate confrontation, and I go to great lengths to avoid it. It’s true. Just ask my wife. I get physically ill when I have a confrontation with someone – whether it’s a close friend or even just a cashier at a gas station.
This morning, when I checked my comment, I was surprised to find that 12 people had “liked” it (and that number has climbed since), and one friend copied it nearly verbatim and posted it on her wall.
But some commenters and made a few points:
-How they vote is none of my business
-Do I think it’s impossible to be friends with someone who holds a different opinion?
-What does a person’s religious and political viewpoints have to do with being their friend?
-Look at the hyprocrisy in belonging to a party that claims to be tolerant, yet unfriends people who don’t agree with them.
These comments made me nervous and upset all day, and I was preoccupied with responding and, ulitmately, smoothing over these ruptures.
I did respond – and very effectively, I feel. My response noted that, yes, of course your voting choices are your own affair and you are under no compulsion to ever divulge any of it to me. And not only do I think it’s possible to be friends with people who hold differing opinions, I think it makes for a richer life. However, religious and political viewpoints have a lot to do with relationships; those views were not created in a vacuum and are part and parcel of a person’s persona. And this is not a political party thing – don’t equate me with Democrats. I have never been a member of any political party, I do not vote solid Democrat, and there are many good reasons for not voting for or against candidates of all stripes. Also, I don’t like the word “tolerate.” If you only tolerate the GLBT community, then you’ve got a long way to go.
Next time I say something inflmmatory, I will do it differently. For example, there’s no need to be confrontational and say to remove me as your friend; I could have just asked what anyone’s reasons were for voting Yes. Also, as was pointed out to me, not everyone holds such a strict definition of “friend.” Some people may consider nearly everyone they know to be their friend, or maybe they accumulate “friends” on Facebook in an effort to garner support for their music or other artistic endeavor.
I think I’m quite different in that way. I “tolerate” everyone I know, but I am not friends with most of them. A few of my co-workers are my Facebook friends, but most are not. The same is true of my relatives. You know how many politicians and preachers begin by saying “Hello friends!” or something like that? Yeah, I would never do that. The reason I would never do that is because most people in the audience – though they may be great people – are simply not my friends. When I spent the day with six Jehovah’s Witnesses who I knew would begin shunning me in less than a week, I concluded my day with them by saying, “Thank you guys for being my friends,” and I sincerely meant it. Those six people were my friends, and though they were probably weirded out by the seemingly unwarranted gravity of my word choice, I wanted to leave them with the thought that, of the 6 billion people on the planet, they ranked among the hundred or so individuals that I have ever considered my friends.
So, though my Facebook comment was worded poorly, was confrontational, and appeared to be controlling by appointing myself final arbitor of what is good and friend-worthy…the underlying motive is true: I really don’t want to be your friend if you are not only heterosexist, but actively work against GLBT rights by voting against them. I don’t want to be your friend if you think black people should not be citizens, either, or if you think wives should be the disenfranchised property of their husbands. In the cases of who my freinds are, I am the final arbitor. If you already are my friend, and hold a different opinion on any matter, great! Let’s talk about it. As someone who used to be a non-voting, sexist, anti-gay, meat-eating, foreign film-despising, current music-loathing Christian who loved the suburbs and didn’t want to go to college or have kids…you just may change my mind. It’s happened before.
In the meantime, I’ll try harder to avoid confrontation. Even though I know I will continue to fail supremely.