Too Thick to Deal With
Looking over the comments below Gaywalkers, Gaytards, and the Gaystapo, I can see that it is time for a refresher course in why we talk here the way we do. To write the same thing for me is not grievous, and for you it is safe (Phil. 3:1). But, alongside the refresher course, a hearty well-done for those of you who clearly do get it.
First, we must recognize the utter lack of proportion that this kind of thing represents. The strategy of pc-correctness is calculated to silence any form of effective opposition to their despotic agenda, and it does this by inverting the proportions. So what we see is an ever-expanding circle of taking offense at trifles, coupled with an ever-increasing pile of “acceptable” outrages. It is demanded that we never use any language that might, under some circumstances, considered in the right light, hurt a fly, while at the same time insisting that the savage butchering of millions of children be considered a women’s health issue. We have a professional class of feminist offendees agonizing over “micro-aggressions” against women, for example, while simultaneously demanding their right to continue unabated their macro-aggressions against the unborn.
We demand groveling apologies from the fellows who fail to strain out a gnat, and give Medals of Freedom to those public-spirited figures who managed to choke down the camel.
We are a generation that, in the words of Dabney, are simultaneously sentimental and inhumane. The only way we react with moral outrage anymore is if someone insults our bizarre and disjointed sentimentalist taboos.
But this is not mindless behavior on their part; it is a play they are running. They are running it very successfully. They arbitrarily make more and more things offensive to say, and then well-meaning Christians who want to “maintain a good witness” volunteer to police the boundaries of their new prohibitions. Orwellian double-speak abounds, with Christians who really should know better serving as the double-speak cops. They do this, thinking it our duty for the sake of the witness, when our real duty is to put our foot through the side of every double-painted lie.
Second, when I coined (or so I thought) the word gaytard, I was courteous enough to explain what I thought I meant by it, and that meaning did not include mocking the mentally handicapped. For all anybody knew, I could have been riffing off of leotard. But no, I wasn’t — I actually was combining gay and retarded, and I was describing those people who are being blockheads — whether homosexual or straight — with regard to the sexual propaganda they are being served up. Now while it is offensive to God to taunt a retarded person for being retarded, it is not offensive to tag someone who ought not to be acting that way.
For example, Paul does this very thing to the Galatians. “O foolish Galatians . . .” he says. The word for foolish is anoetos — without reason, without sanity or sobriety, stupid. Is Paul walking through a psych ward, making fun of people? Not if you know how to read.
Third, on top of all this, one commenter noted that the word had an entry in the Urban Dictionary, and so I went and took a look see. And in that august place, the meaning given was not the same as mine. There it referred to someone who was simultaneously gay and retarded — obviously scurrilous and offensive, and unnecessarily so. While there, learning one of the names that you street-wise secularists taunt mentally-handicapped homosexuals with, I was helpfully offered the opportunity to “buy ‘gaytard’ mugs and shirts.”
So if you would like, all you people who are distressed at my word choices might want to head off to the complaints department of the Urban Dictionary and protest their calloused disregard of civilized discourse, and their merchandizing off the actual misfortunes of actual gaytards. Good luck. I’ll wait here for you. While you are there, you might discover that their gaytard entry is one of their milder offenses.
And last, one observer thought that I was interfering with his ability to spread the message of God’s love, and that is why he wanted me dead. You really can’t make this stuff up. At least he didn’t want me dead because our church sometimes sings imprecatory psalms. That would have made the irony too thick to deal with.
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