Can I bum a fag?

Those who speak the Queen's English may want to read on, if only to unconfuse themselves.

We are afflicted with yet another example of stars speaking ill of some subsection of our society and, yet again, I'm gonna go there. I'll restrict the merciless mirthfulness to the title this time. There's a serious matter in this minor incident, though not necessarily what you might imagine.

Our attention, drummed up towards ire, has been directed at a disparaging term among co-workers, an illocution whose employment resulted in an inadvertent outing and reinforced the general stigma on homosexuals. (Did it contribute to a hostile work environment? Considering it was ancillary to a actual physical scuffle involving McDramamine, I'd say it wasn't the only contribution.)

The offender issued his predictably rotund and deluded denial, following up with an equally predictable and legalistic admission/apology. The fulfillment of this now-mandatory ritual of contrition has, predictably, not calmed anything down, though a Gibsonian reading of recent history suggests the furor will die down shortly--if it is not soon redirected by a fresh atrocity.

What has offended and upset me in this incident is how much the righteous are relying for their rhetorical force on how many people are offended and upset by the uttering of the epithet.

Don't get me wrong: I consider disparaging people, individually or by class, because of an aspect of their identity despicable and wrong. Period. Shouldn't that be sufficient moral fortification, if not the primary means by which we confront prejudice: that it's wrong? Why do we need to invoke an aggrieved right-thinking majority?

Bear in mind that I study humans as social creatures for a living. I'm well aware of and quite comfortable pointing out the symbolic, institutional, and interpersonal tools that groups have for bringing their members into line. I have felt them acting on me on numerous occasions. There's no intrinsic harm in being normative or reinforcing "community standards," particularly if we are more self-aware than doctrinaire in so doing.

I simply want to point out the logical and, not inconsequentially, moral problems in using the percentage of a population and their degree of offendedness as your major argument against truth claims. Because there is a tacit truth claim in likening a gay man to a bundle of sticks: not all of us are equally self-evidently human, and the majority decides who they are.

Now, the majority decides de facto what is and is not acceptable. ( I study cults and ufologists; I'm well aware of this.) But I can think of plenty of instances where what the majority of a society at time X reject as the wrong/false/bad beliefs of a minority has by time Y become unquestioned common sense. There's more than enough scholarship on how that happens, concretely and abstractly.

If you accept, as it seems the majority of Americans do, that there are such things as objective, mind-independent facts--and they're not always obvious--do you think taking a poll is any sure way to Truth? If you're really OK with deferring to the majority on epistemological or moral matters, consider what the majority of Americans thought of ethnic, racial, or religious minorities in 1870. Or 1960. Or now.

Not sure I'm cool with that.
Got a light?