Smackdown!

Today at 11:00am, KUOW 94.9 will air the gay marriage debate between King County Executive Ron Sims, and Eastside bigot, Rev. Ken Hutcherson.

According to the P-I, the debate is centered less on whether or not gay marriage is morally right, and more on whether or not the gay-rights movement is an issue of civil rights.

“Simply put, Sims, who is the state's highest elected black official, believes discriminating against a person based on sexual orientation is only the latest incarnation of a decades-long struggle to protect the civil rights of minorities.

While Hutcherson, who also is black -- and raised in the segregated South -- finds such characterizations an insult.

"I have never met an ex-black, but I have met many ex-homosexuals," he said, offering his familiar quip that homosexuality is merely a lifestyle choice, not to mention a sin, and undeserving of government protection.”

The debate promises not only to raise our blood pressure and get our eyes rolling straight out of our head, but also to accomplish absolutely nothing.

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By Jack in News on March 8, 2006 10:36 AM

Comments [rss]

Spaz Cadet

Well of COURSE you can't meet an ex-black, Hutcherson. I'd posit you can't meet a real "ex-gay," either. However, I can say with certainty that during the Jim Crow era many blacks, as today in many places for gay people, were unable to fully express themselves.

There were plenty of blacks before Jim Crow was over who "passed" for white and lived lives as white people, having to hide their personal history and families from their employers and neighbors.

There were also blacks who would just smile and nod their heads at whatever bullshit their white bosses/neighbors said because they knew if they didn't play the ignorant, stupid "house darkie" they'd be a target of abuse, or even lynchings. They stayed away from certain businesses. Any thoughts they had about being treated unequally were completely squelched or kept under wraps in their family.

Today, in Seattle, gays get to live, basically, freely. But in the rural South and West you know there are gay people that just pass as straight. Not all of them express themselves — politically or even as gay people — among their own family, so invested in "passing" are they that they take on a heterosexual life. Many of them know if they are open about their sexuality they could be beaten up or worse.

And the racists always justified their actions through the Bible then, too.