R U Billo?

[Bluenorthwest]

Kudos to DU for coming to understand, perhaps, the connection between hate speech and real world violence. It is in fact the issue that brought me to DU, during the Primary in 2008.
It is easy to see the flaws in others, such as Bill O'Reilly. Clearly his invective and hyperbolic language, the use of the word 'killer' and all of that contributes to the violence we have recently seen. Many threads on the subject have been posted in the last day or so.
Now. Here are some facts for review:

In 2008 alone, there was a spike in violent crime against LGBT people. Overall, the FBI reported a 1 percent decline in hate crimes in the U.S. last year--but a 6 percent increase in hate crimes against gay, lesbian and transgender people.

On January 6, 11 gay bars in Seattle received letters addressed to the "Owner/Manager" that warned, "Your establishment has been targeted. I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients." A 12th letter was sent to the alternative weekly, The Stranger, warning that the paper should be "prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals."
On December 13, in the Bay Area city of Richmond, a lesbian woman was gang-raped by four men who used homophobic epithets as they violently assaulted her for almost an hour, before leaving her naked in the street.
Feb of last year witnessed the shooting murder of 15 year old Lawrence King in Oxnard CA for being gay. On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, s. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head.

Now, thinking of how awful Billo is for using words like 'killer' let's review the words of another political entity about gay people:
"The gloves are off and if there's going to be a war, there's going to be a war. But it will be a war with a purpose? I'm not in the mood to play with those who are trying to kill our children."

Who accuses gay people of 'trying to kill our children? Hannity? Coulter? Nope. Those are the words of Donnie McClurkin, who hosted and preached against gay people at Obama official campaign events.
Why does Donnie declare war against gay folks? Well, he says:
"there are many other things to be done to break the curse of homosexuality."
He's declared war on a people cursed by God, people who are trying to kill our children. Now when the GLBT communities complained about that hate speaker being used to speak hate at Obama's official events, then Senator Obama said he disagreed with Donnie....but he also said that those who agree with Donnie are "good, decent and moral people." Democratic Underground featured many, many defenses of McClurkin as part of Obama's campaign.
I ask you all to review the matter. Hypocrisy is a vile thing. I agree that the Right Wing hate talkers produce real world violence. But the same is true of all hate talkers, all of them.
Would anyone like to explain to Lawrence King's friends and family that when McClurkin uses hate speech it is somehow acceptable? Tell them that Billo leads to the death of doctors, but that Donnie does not have a thing to do with the death of gay people, although he has declared war upon us for being killers of children? Who wants to do that? Anyone?

So I came to DU to say that hate speech leads to real world violence, and I was speaking at the time against McClurkin. I was told Donnie's a great guy, and all kinds of stuff. We gay folk were being 'hysterical' and engaging in poutrage when we pointed out the exact same thing done by Donnie as is done by Billo and the right.
Same thing. Own that and perhaps we can get somewhere. Or keep pretending that 'they' have problems with hate speech, and 'we' are just clean as can be.