Saturday, March 03, 2007

Thank you ma'am

Elizabeth Edwards has a nice post on the whole Ann Coulter brouhaha. I'm happy that she's using this as a way of attacking homophobia:

Although her words did not hurt us, they may have hurt some in the gay community. We are all sick and tired of anyone supporting or applauding or introducing hate words into the national dialogue, tired of people thinking that words that cause others pain are fair game. And we are sick and tired of people like Miss Coulter thinking that her use of loaded words about the homosexual community in this country is remotely humorous or appropriate.


In general, this is how people should respond to homophobic or racist language -- hit back against the speakers for being prejudiced. Enough progress has been made on the more crude variety of racial slurs that even outside polite society, they do more to damage the speaker than to humiliate the target of the language. It won't be long until antigay slurs work the same way, and every bit of scorn that we throw at people who use the slurs brings that time closer.

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