Tea for Tuesday

There are some things in this world I simply don't understand in the I-can't-possibly-wrap-my-brain-around-this-kind-of-cruelty-horror-ignorance-etc. way.  Like the Holocaust.  Or child molesters.  Mass murderers and purveyors of homophobia, xenophobia, and people like Assad in Syria murdering his own people so he can stay in his own diabolical dictatorship.  You know who else I would add to this list?  The Tea Party.

Now, they don't exactly fit under the "cruelty and horror" heading I had listed above, but for me, where they really do fit, as a party platform, is under the heading of ignorance.

I am sure there are tons of really nice Tea Partiers who bake cookies and say nice things about gay people and may even have rational conversations with those who oppose their views.  But then I read this:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/04/16/anti-gay-tea-party-speaker-screams-at-lgbt-protesters-we-will-not-be-silenced-by-faggots/

"Scott Lively is an anti-gay hate merchant who is known as a “professional worldwide hunter of homosexuals and top proponent of ‘gay cure’” as well as a supporter of Uganda’s ‘kill gays’ legislation. So it wasn’t very surprising that Lively was allowed to be a speaker at a Tea Party Tax Day rally in Boston, Massachusetts on Sunday. It also wasn’t a surprise that LGBT protesters would hold a counter rally against the hatred."


That's just the first paragraph of the article, here are paragraphs two and three. 

“Reports from attendees were that in response to disturbances by protestors, one of the speakers said from the podium, broadcast across the loud speakers at the Commons, “We will not be silenced by faggots.”

"Police then arrived and forcibly broke up the LGBT demonstrators and left the Tea Party alone. The Boston Police Department is now investigating reports that officers used excessive force while breaking up the LGBT counter rally."

I won't say that every individual in the Tea Party espouses this kind of hatred because I don't believe that every Republican is a money grubber and every Democrat a tree hugger.  But I do believe that there are common threads that hold the tapestry together, and well, if your tapestry includes treating others as the Tea Party does I'll give them a big pass and remind them that there are people of consciousness in this world who can deal with people who oppose them without using ignorant epithets.

I'll close with this:

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” 
― Harlan Ellison