Reply #5: Why does this matter?

[RoyGBiv]

I've been having a similar, extended discussion with two co-workers recently, one of whom is gay, the other a Latino man.

I am new to this place and so don't know all the people with whom I work very well, so I've paid attention to try to gage what topics are acceptable to various individuals. (I want no running arguments in a work environment.) These two in particular struck me as liberal types, and deep down they really are, but, as I learned, they are also exceedingly ignorant of the world around them.

The gay man, for obvious reasons, surprised me the most. A woman came into the place the other day wearing a pink pro-Kerry hat, and I complimented her on it. The gay man asked me what it had said that caused the compliment -- he had only seen the color and has an aversion to pink due to stereotypes -- and when I told him, he made a raspberry sound and said something like, "Ahh, who gives a crap. They're both the same." I was floored.

At another moment, I was with both the gay man and the Latino man, and I heard on the television behind me that one of the hostages had been murdered in Iraq. I said something unflattering about Bush. Both individuals heard me and questioned me, asking me essentially the same thing, "Why do you care so much?" They'd also noted earlier that I occasionally check DU from work during my down time, and I've mentioned a few of the threads, so they have a pretty good gage of my interest level.

And so, since we were slow at the time and had nothing else better to do, I told them.

Neither seemed convinced, but it was the gay man who again surprised me the most by saying he didn't care about the right to get married. He wouldn't get married if someone paid him. He completely failed to see the larger issue, the right to choose to get married or not. He had no choice.

With their permission, I've started sending them e-mail of stories I run across that help explain why I care so much. I send the Latino man pictures from Iraq, pictures I choose deliberately of kids about the same age of his son, whom he adores.

I don't know if any of it will work, but I'm doing what I can. That's all any of us who are aware of the world around us can do. Willful ignorance is a plague for which there may not be a cure that's not worse than the disease itself.