This is a comment by Marcus Williams on the post “Vikings’ Chris Kluwe Kicks Serious Verbal Ass—And You Should Too“.
“I agree 100% with you that gays should be entitled to the legal benefits and privileges of marriage, however that particular combination of things like tax benefits, child custody, medical authority, etc. wants to be called under the law. I don’t really care if it’s called “marriage” or a “civil union” as long as *legally* they get the same perks as opposite sex marriage. Religiously, I don’t give a shit if some believer or official church refuses to recognize it as marriage in some spiritual sense, because that’s religion and that’s up to them. There’s lots of religion (all of it, really) that I don’t agree with, but that doesn’t mean I consider every religious person a bigot.
“I agree 100% that Kluwe’s statement was heroic, not just because of the position he was staking out, but because he risks his own reputation and well-being by not just doing the easy thing and staying quiet. He deserves praise, and it would be great to see more people follow his example. That said, I reject the notion of considering every person who doesn’t do the heroic thing to be a bigot, coward, or whatever word of the day you want to use to describe people as monsters for simply acting like most people instead of doing the heroic thing. No one is a hero on every issue, so if you’re ready to hold the non-heros in contempt for your pet issue, be prepared be held in contempt for not being bravely outspoken and active on some other noble cause that isn’t quite prominent enough for you to sacrifice time, money, work, and reputation for.
“For example, have you saved any whales this week by jumping in a boat to take on Japanese whalers or using spare time to write letters and editorials about whale preservation instead of spending that time with family or watching YouTube videos? No? Whale bigot! You obviously hate animals in general and whales in particular if you don’t dedicate yourself to their preservation with every waking breath. I bet a whale bigot like yourself doesn’t even dream of whales. If you’re not part of the whale solution, you may as well be shooting the harpoons yourself. For shame.
“Doing or saying nothing is what most people do most of the time when there is something to lose, and that’s most of the time, even if the only thing at stake is “what will this person think of me?”. I don’t think that’s noble or preferable, but I think it’s so unavoidable as to not deserve heaping piles of condemnation when it happens. Let’s celebrate the heros (like Kluwe in this case) and hope that inspires others to do the same, rather than taking that heroic action and treating it like the ordinary everyday thing that everybody but monsters do, which face it, makes most people monsters.
“I elaborated a similar argument in my piece, Sandusky, Paterno, Rick Reilly, & Me.”
Photo credit: Flickr / Drama Queen
About the Editors
“I don’t really care if it’s called “marriage” or a “civil union” as long as *legally* they get the same perks as opposite sex marriage.”
It’s called “separate but equal.”
No, it’s called separation of church and state. Churches don’t get to write and enforce the laws, while the state doesn’t get to tell churches what to believe. At least, that’s the way it was written up here in the U.S.; it doesn’t always turn out that way.
As long as straight couples can get married in civil ceremonies, the same should be available to gay couples. Religious marriage has nothing to do with civil marriage.
That’s well put, and I agree completely. That’s why I can accept (but not like) if some church considers gay marriage an abomination, as long as civil rights are not abridged as a result. That’s the kind of “separate” I’m fine with, which is different from the “separate but equal” phrase which evokes Jim Crow laws and treating groups differently under the law.
Ok, but it’s not what you wrote in your article.
Sorry if I didn’t manage to make my point clear on the first go-round, but that’s what I was trying to get at with the first paragraph quoted above. I emphasize “quoted” to point out that above was not an article, but quotes from comments I made in a comment thread on another post. That’s not an excuse for unclear writing, but I will admit that I’m not as careful in composing comments as I am when writing an actual article. I do appreciate you engaging me on the point here so I got a chance to clarify. It looks to me like we’re in agreement.
While I agree with you 100% that most people have a “pet” cause and that most people aren’t always standing up to be a hero in fear of losing something important, we need to remember that standing up for human rights needs to be the norm not the exception. Need I remind folks about Nazis and the human slave trade both historically and present day just to name a few?
If standing up for human rights was the norm, people who did it wouldn’t stand out as heroes, because it would be…well, the norm. Like, breathing needs to be the norm while living, so when people breathe, we don’t praise them for being role models of living.
I hope this doesn’t mean we do the right thing in any given situation because we want to be praised as a hero. It wouldn’t surprise me though since we live in a time when students get pizza parties because they did their homework and every kid on a team gets a trophy simply because they showed up to play. Thank you so much for contributing this article. I really enjoy the GMP.
I know what you mean, because in my gut, I agree that doing the right thing because it’s right feels preferable to doing it to get praised as a hero. It’s an interesting thing to ponder though, because if the right thing gets done either way, is it really so terrible if the motive for some was wanting the praise? If you think of some example where inaction leads to harm, it doesn’t seem preferable for someone to remain idle rather than to intervene and receive praise for heroism *that they craved*. If a kid gets pulled from near-death by a stranger who risked his/her life to do it, I wouldn’t want the person who only did it in hopes of getting featured on the news to have chosen instead to suppress those selfish heroic urges and let the kid perish.
Pizza parties for finishing homework is a new one to me, but I’ve heard the trophy for every kid thing. I’m skeptical that it happens as often as people think, but it raises some issues I do hope to write an actual essay about some time. It’s nothing to do with what prompted the gay marriage comments above, but I think the trophy thing (if it’s happening that way) is the byproduct of our culture’s absurd emphasis on winning as the only reason to compete, to the point that the only way kids (and eventually adults) feel like participating was worth it was if they won. If fun, sportsmanship, camaraderie, effort, and various other things were given more weight and winning was knocked down several notches to the low priority I think it deserves for *recreational* competition, there’d be less reason for anyone to think everyone needed a trophy, because they’d already be feeling good about playing for all those other reasons. I firmly believe everyone should feel good about playing, even the losers, but we learn from childhood that losers suck and shouldn’t play, so trophies are a token to try trick little kids into thinking they aren’t losers. To me, the travesty of “every kid gets a trophy” isn’t that kids are treated like winners without winning anything, it’s that it perpetuates the notion that some stupid prize at the end is the reason for playing in the first place.
I can assure you that both of my children (now 19 and 17 years old) have gotten trophies not because their teams finished in first, second or third place but because every kid who joined the league got a trophy. I would really enjoy reading your essay when you write it. I grew up in the 70′s and 80′s. I had to be potty trained to join the team meaning my parents didn’t think that I had to join at age 2 or give up any chance of being an Olympian. Actually most of the kids on my team rode their bikes to the field. The only snack we had at practices was water from a big red and white jug. My parents didn’t hover around the field and only came to the actual games. You are exactly correct in that the lessons learned from being a team, having fun, encouraging each other etc. were worth it more than a trophy (which I have actually won) that is probably in a landfill somewhere in Ohio.