Miss Pissypants

You know, I’m really getting pretty fucking sick of this shit.

Two men convicted of beating a Seattle man because he is gay were sentenced yesterday to just under a year in jail.

In June, Micah Painter was beaten and cut with a broken bottle in an assault by a group of men, one of whom first asked whether he was gay before attacking him.

Seattle, huh? Hey, Microsoft—isn’t that your neck of the woods? What’s your opinion about this story? Let me guess. You’re feeling a bit…neutral.

This is why it’s important for the Left to be vocal and visible in our support of gay rights, because when we skulk around mumbling about respecting the views of those who find homosexuality objectionable, instead of saying, “Fine, asshole—find it objectionable all you want, but that doesn’t preclude a guarantee of equal rights,” loud and definitively, it creates the sense that perhaps gays don’t need to be protected at all, even from getting beaten and cut with a broken bottle by a couple of homophobic fuckwits.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, we should recall the March meeting of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish leaders to denounce the upcoming Jerusalem WorldPride 2005 event, which, under the banner “Love Without Borders” was to be a celebration of LGBT pride for the community and its supporters. Their commentary on the event included such tolerance-reflective gems as:

"They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable. It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it."

-- Shlomo Amar, Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi

"We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty. This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem."

-- Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik

[It's] "the spiritual rape of the Holy City. This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land."

-- Rev. Leo Giovinetti, an evangelical pastor from San Diego's Mission Valley Christian Fellowship, author of the petition against the festival, "Homosexuals to Desecrate Jerusalem"

[It's an] "offense to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world."

-- Pope John Paul II, in reference to the first WorldPride festival, held in Rome five years ago.

Now it’s being reported that:

Police are investigating a fire at Jerusalem's only LGBT bar as extreme Orthodox rabbis and Christian evangelical groups ratchet up the rhetoric in opposition to World Pride celebrations scheduled for the city this summer.

Sa'ar Netanel, a member of Jerusalem's city council and the owner of the bar, Shushan, said that Sunday night a man entered the doorway of the club and threw a burning rag inside.

Flames spread quickly but patrons escaped without injury.

No one has claimed responsibility but relations have worsened between city's gays and conservative rabbis, Muslim clerics, and Christian fundamentalists in recent weeks.

Cause. Effect.

We need to stop pretending that hate speech doesn’t matter, or that it’s somehow acceptable if it’s cloaked in religion. No one with the merest capacity for logic can claim to be surprised when inflammatory rhetoric results in fires being set.

In this case, literally.

(Hat tip to Daily Mendacity.)