But today, I came across some very disgusting material on the internet, in the form of some guy's LiveJournal. I know that this one instance of hate shouldn't have had such a profound effect on me, but it did. I'm pretty active in the LJ community, and I discovered this guy in a reply he made to a post in an atheist community. He made a lot of disgusting remarks about atheists and gays - a lot of blanket statements and a lot of hate speech. I was silly enough to let his remarks piss me off to the point where I made an equally nasty reply. Then, wondering what this person was really like, I checked out his personal journal.
Bad idea. His profile consisted of this quote:
"If it is "racist" to prefer the company of people of one's race, to prefer the culture created by one's race, and to want one's race to survive and flourish, then virtually everyone of every color is "racist," and the term has no useful meaning."
When I looked at his actual journal, it got worse. Nearly every post was bigoted. He hates feminists and says that a woman's place is "in the kitchen" and that his rights are stomped on by women getting too much power and respect in the workplace and other areas of life. But he has no problem posting disgusting pornographic pictures of women. Apparently, we only exist to clean his house and let him fuck us; if we make any claim to being an actual person, it stomps on his "rights".
He then moved on to discuss blacks and Asians, which he called many disgusting names and said things like, "sure, I know a couple of good black people, but 95% of them are *insert derogatory language here* and we would all benefit if the entire race were wiped out."
He moves on to gays, in which he describes being "hit on" by a "f***ot", and how he told this person off in no uncertain terms, stating his heterosexuality and the evils, horrors, and inherent "wrongness" of homosexuality. However, he had no qualms about jacking off to pornographic pictures he posted of two women kissing.
I shouldn't have been surprised by this sort of thing, but it really did affect me. I realized that in this person's eyes, I was nothing but a dishwasher and walking vagina - although probably not even that, as I don't match his seeming ideal of blonde, shaved, pierced, anorexic women. I realized that he wants to "wipe out" me and every other atheist (and non-Christian, and non-white) in the world, just for not being like him. And he's not the only one like this. It made me physically sick and very depressed.
So all you people voting conservative - I just hope you know who you're sharing a party with. When you deny homosexuals the right to marry, when you try to put religion into the public arena, when you try to get rid of affirmative action, when you deny women the right to choose what to do with their bodies, you are moving your country step by step closer to this man's hate-filled "utopia". I just hope you realize that next time you vote conservative. Behind the rhetoric and the "moral rectitude" of conservative politics is pure hatred and intolerance - the desire to make everyone have your morals, have your beliefs, look and act and feel like you, and if they can't or they refuse, to obliterate them.
I don't think I can go back to the way I looked at the world before. I am really, really scared for America and for the world.
