Friday, September 25, 2015

Gay friends? Names please

Many times an anti-gay person will try to justify their beliefs and actions by saying I have gay friends and they respect my position. The response from the gay community is usually along the lines of, yeah, sure, how about you introduce us to these supposed gay friends? Well Kim Davis (remember her?) tried that line this week.

And Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin does a bit of deconstruction. He says Davis (and others like her) rely on two premises, both of which are no longer true.

The first assumption is that listeners don't have any gay friends of their own. But nearly 90% of Americans say they know a gay person and it is easy to ask them about the prevailing opinion, which is Davis' actions are not OK and not worthy of respect.

The second assumption is that gay people are still mostly closeted. Davis can't toss out that claim and assume the public will respect privacy and not ask for names. And now both the Kentucky Equality Federation and the Daily Beast are searching for those supposed gay friends.

Dallas Black heard about the search and stepped forward. He said Davis was a kind and sweet person when she helped him with paperwork after his mother died. But he doesn't recognize the woman he sees now.

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