This is What Equality Feels Like

You want to be treated like an equal in society?

This is how I treat everyone who makes his/her feelings the center of an issue:

It’s not about you.

Seriously, that’s what I say to everyone in our self-focused culture.

Mothers who want special treatment?

Americans who need protection from words?

Single people whose needs aren’t being met in some nonspecific way? (My own grandmother was upset with me over that one. But we were on the same page in the end!)

When I think people are wallowing in self-pity and trying to make the world revolve around them, I say something.

So, this is for you, people struggling with gay attraction.

It’s not about you.

My decision not to let my 5-year-old see the new Beauty and the Beast movie (featuring “Disney’s first openly-gay character”) has nothing to do with your feelings.

Which means I give about as much value to your feelings as I do my own.

This is what equality feels like.

I won’t be more diplomatic while I’m slaughtering your sacred cows than I have been with anyone else.

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This week, Christians have been told:

-“Stop freaking out” “calm down” and “chill out.”

-“Gay people exist…and in real life, people lie. People cheat. People steal. People have affairs and pre-marital sex.”

-Boycotting Beauty and the Beast will be “harmful to the Christian Gospel” because “[it] suggests Christians are offended by the existence of gay people – even if that’s not how the boycotter intends it.”

-Plus a bunch of other warnings that Christians are hypocrites for boycotting a movie over homosexuality, instead of treating it the same as any other sin.

…except, all the finger-wagging at Christians is proof that homosexuality is NOT exactly like every other sin.

Gayness is the exception because gayness is the sin that our culture is glad to endorse.

Consider that the director of the movie said, “This is part of a celebration of love.”

And the actor who plays the gay character said he was “honored” to be a part of the movie which others have called history-making.

Would there be this much fanfare surrounding Disney’s first portrayal of any other sexual preference? 

If a movie aimed at kids portrayed a character “struggling with his feelings” for a stripper, I think we’d see an outcry…but that would be especially true if the people who made the movie treated it like some sort of cultural milestone.

So, gay people, please don’t make this about your feelings.

And, Christians, please don’t fall for the bait-and-switch that homosexuality is no worse than other sins–when Hollywood actively promotes it as BETTER.

As I said on Facebook:

If you agree with that perspective, but you’re still making excuses for the normalization of homosexuality in Beauty and the Beast, then YOU are the hypocrite who expects special treatment for your favorite sin…

Or course, I agree that Christians ought to be consistent with their criticism.

So, I promise, the next time a director proudly announces the “first-ever character who looks at pornography,” I’ll be outspokenly against showing the film to my very young child.    (At least until her age is greater than the number of fingers on one hand.)

This is how I handle the ridiculous double-standards of liberal culture. Expecting me to make a special exception to spare the feelings of gay people would be unequal.