Hey, I just saw where Poppy Z. Brite () called me a bigot today.

You see, there was a message board post about gay rights and I chimed
in and talked about how I’ve been told to get a haircut or not come
back to work at some past jobs. My post was mostly a joke but meant to
point out how liberals like to play the politics of division rather
than of unity. I called myself a long-haired heterosexual white male
conservative Republican and blamed my long hair on genetics. In her
blog today Poppy said:

That’s the problem, you see: I have idiot fatigue. I don’t
except myself from this; the Internet has definitely made me dumber. I can’t do
anything about the other idiots, but I can do something about myself. I don’t
want to use Feedster to find out what people have said about me on their blogs.
I don’t want babybats who think I should just discreetly keel over dead if I’m
not going to write that Lost Souls sequel. I don’t want Tom Fitzmorris
pontificating about New Orleans
restaurants. I don’t want self-proclaimed foodies telling each other how great
Jacques-Imo’s is. I don’t want John Skipp promoting his new vanity-press book
in breathy babytalk (“READIN’ ‘N’ WRITIN’!!!!”) on Shocklines. I
don’t want bigots equating gay rights with the right to have long hair on
Horrorgasms (surely the most embarrassing board name ever, er, conceived). I
don’t want to know about Nicky P’s latest flailings. I don’t want LJDrama.

Emphasis is mine to show the part about me. I guess she called me an
idiot, too. Should I care? Well, I don’t. I’ve been called worse by
better. Besides that, the legal benefits of marriage, which was the
subject in that message board thread, aren’t rights. The legal benefits
afforded to married people are privileges granted by the state. Who is
the state? The people. And in many states the people have said they
will not grant the legal benefits of marriage to gay couples,
incestuous couples, polygamists, etc.

Beyond the gay marriage thing and back to the politics of division,
that issue has always gotten to me about the liberals. They’re always
talking about the black vote, the gay vote, the female vote, the
Hispanic vote, the angry white male vote, the retiree vote, and on and
on. And they just keep on losing elections because they can’t see that
some issues that are important to the angry white males are also
important to gay people and black people and others. I think most
voters are tired of being pigeonholed. Tired of being seen as another
digit on a statistical breakdown meant to determine how they’ll vote.

But hey, if some folks say I’m a bigot because this is how I see
things, I can live with that. I have friends and enemies of all
different races and orientations. Those who know me know I like them or
not based on how they treat others and not on what color they are,
what’s between their legs, or who they go to bed with.