If you think about it, it was much like some people’s attitudes towards blacks.Those who strongly supported the Jim Crow laws down south often did so because they had these old, old ideas of blacks, dating from the slave period, that unless kept separate they would always be looking to get at whites, kill them, rape their women, etc, that blacks were not ‘civilized’, you name it. With the end of segregation laws, when people actually were forced to interact with black folks, when they didn’t have their ‘separate worlds’, attitudes changed. It isn’t perfect, some people will hate no matter what, and those attitudes are not exactly only seen down south (take it from me,mention things like low income housing, court decisions about exclusive zoning regulations, and in the burbs here in NJ you will hear how that will mean gang activity when you move ‘those’ people from Newark, Passaic and Paterson, crime, drugs, you name it). Or like with same sex marriage, once loving was passed, attitudes changed almost overnight.
The same thing has happened elsewhere, and it shows in polls and such. One of the biggest losers are the religious groups that have staked a lot on same sex marriage being this disaster, especially the ones proclaiming how God is gonna get us for allowing it, when the smoke settles and all that happens is the sun comes up, the darn dog wants to go out, your teenager wrecked the car, your son tells you he wants to be a rock musician, not go to college, you have to attend the umpteenth meeting of the day at work and wonder what you did to deserve that, you realize how little merit those pronouncements had, and churches whose leaders made such a big noise about this will feel it a lot I suspect.
I’m very selective in my facebook friends but I just saw a post on facebook about cleaning out “friends” based on comments made in the past 24 hours. Tons of folks were commenting on the post mentioning that they’ve removed 1, 3, 4, 5 or more friends each for bigoted comments. Life is too short for negativity and prejudice.
Apparently there is a link on FB where you can superimpose a rainbow flag on your profile picture. I notice that D and a number of her friends have done so.
I don’t spend much time on my FB and pretty much never post. But I did look at my feed and I was disgusted by some of the posts I saw in response to the SCOTUS ruling. I thought about “unfriending” these people, and then wondered if it’s fair to do that over differences of opinion in politics, religions, etc., and wondered if I would have any friends if we have to agree on everything. But then, I thought that a lot of people who have “friended” me are not and have never really been friends. They are just people I used to go to school with. So with that in mind, I starting unfriending some of them, thinking that life is too short to endorse those who will go out of their way to post hatred/bigotry on their social media pages. It’s not even the fact that some of them may point to religious beliefs as justification for their feelings, it’s the fact of the hateful way many of them have gone about expressing it. So, there we are.
And the worst post I saw was made by a relative who is a therapist. Nice.
My conservative FB “friends” (from high school) and relatives have been very quiet the past couple days. I see lots of rainbow filtered profile pictures from my adult friends.
No comments at all on my FB, even from some mighty liberal friends, who usually jump on all sorts of topics. Oddly quiet for that group. Two did add the rainbow, but they’re generally more into cat videos.
Well, I have to concede that there were a lot more rainbow posts, either just adding the rainbow to a profile pic, or in some cases, positive statements. The ugly posts were not that many in number, but they had “likes” from a fair number of people.
Last I saw, the nastiness from the relative hadn’t received any likes other than from the spouse.
“But I did look at my feed and I was disgusted by some of the posts I saw in response to the SCOTUS ruling”
I hear you! I once again looked in the trashcan of my inbox for emails of the acquaintance who decided to bombard us with anti-US propaganda after the recent events in the Ukraine (I already mentioned it in other threads). Oh boy - interesting how they twist the reality. Apparently, the SCOTUS caved in to the demands of a minority by legalizing gay marriage and by doing so jeopardized the safety of the US children (!). Say what?! I would not even try to repeat what those rags wrote. Back on the ignore her email went. Disgusting.
It is clear from FB that I live in a bubble – my Facebook feed is full of rainbows, not a negative comment from anyone. I usually don’t unfriend people – I just set it up so I don’t see their posts. I checked a couple of them, and they didn’t comment on this ruling.
Here’s a view of some of today’s front pages from around the country:
From the previous controversial news rather it be racial or international news, I’ve dwindled my Facebook friends list to a nice number. There’s nothing but positivity or respectful discontentment. It’s not that I “close myself out to differing opinions”. It’s that it’s my Facebook and I want to see opinions from people who are able to express their views in a respectful way, not dripping with hatred.
Just had lunch with my 91 year old mom, who has no exposure to news at all. So I caught her up on this extraordinary week, and when I got to yesterday’s ruling, she teared up. Then when I told her that D is going to Seattle Pride this afternoon, she started crying and said, “I wish I could go too.” I texted that to D and she responded, “Tell Grandma I’ll march for her!!”
My FB feed exploded in rainbows and hearts and all sorts of love, yesterday. Maybe I am living in a bubble, but it’s a good one. It was just non-stop wonderful to follow and keep up with all the love. I’m sure there are a few friends who didn’t agree, but they didn’t post anything. Which was wise.
