Ignorance

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."--Elie Wiesel

 

Makes you wonder, sometimes, how ignorance can possibly be considered bliss. In my opinion, ignorance is ignorance, and nothing else.

 

As I was sitting in my Tuesday school club, GSA (Gay Straight Alliance, for those of you who may or may not know), we were finishing watching the Laramie Project, and I'm pretty sure that by the end of it, I'd cried like I'd never cried before.

 

I know there are those who may have never seen it before, so I'll do a brief overview.

 

On the night of October 6th (and 7th), 1998, in Laramie, Wyoming, a homosexual by the name of Matthew Shepard was killed.

 

Matthew, a 21 year-old going on 22 in a couple of days, was 'given a ride' by two guys around his same age,  Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, and was beaten up repeatedly until he was pretty much unconscious.

 

McKinney and Henderson drove Shepard to a field out in the middle of nowhere, dragged his unconscious body out of the car, tied him to a fence, and as Matthew gained a bit of consciousness, McKinney and Henderson beat him until he was knocked out cold.

 

That night, Matthew was lying there, tied to that fence, unable to move or talk or do anything, and he was out in the literal middle of nowhere, so much so that there wasn't a soul around for miles.

 

He was discovered in the morning by a bike rider who was going on his daily bike ride, and the biker called 911, the police showing up immediately and bringing Matthew to the nearest hospital.

 

He had severe head trauma and was in a coma/concussion, never awake and aware of what was going on.

 

Meanwhile, uproar spiraled out of control as media got wind of Matthew's death, causing Laramie's residents to panic.

 

"Everyone says, 'Laramie's not that type of town'!" one girl who was interviewed said. "But let's face it: we ARE that kind of town."

 

Other interviewees echoed her statement: "You can't deny what's happened," said one of the men, a member of the LGBTQ Community, much like Matthew. "You  can't say, 'That never happened!' Why? 'Cause it did. As sad and cruel and twisted and WRONG as it is, we're marked by what these kids have done. You can't look at Laramie and view it the same as before Matthew Shepard was killed."

 

As days and weeks passed and Shepard still wasn't recovering, the pandemonium died down but turned into widespread panic. Maybe it was because everyone assumed Matthew would live, and they could just put this behind them. But the longer he stayed in a coma, the less likely the chances were of his survival.

 

And a couple weeks after Matthew was tied to a fence and then brought to a hospital the next morning, he died.

 

And that's when all hell broke loose. People saying Matthew deserved to die; that homosexuality was a crime and an unacceptable way of life. Others defended him, saying that he was a great kid and that there was absolutely no justification for what had happened, and that they were disgusted by what McKinney and Henderson had done.

 

But in the end, more people were okay with Matthew's death and/or celebrating it than the people who stuck up for him and said it was not right.

 

So the Laramie Project was created so that a couple members of the LGBTQ community could interview Laramie's residents and try to get their viewpoints, later on turning it into a play, and then, even later, a documentary.

 

The rest is too disgusting and disturbing to recount here, so if you'd like to know what else happened, I suggest you watch it.

 

As I listened to what some of the people were saying, I have to say I think I was about to slam my fist through the TV screen.

 

Here were these idiots, these absolute ASSHOLES, saying that they were glad Matthew Shepard was dead. Hell, a priest even went so far as to say that he hoped while Matthew was tied to the fence, bleeding and dying slowly, was thinking about the impact his lifestyle had on the 'members of Laramie,' and that it was an unjustified way of life.

 

I was dumbstruck. How can you justify murder?! It doesn't matter if you commit a hate crime-murder-because of someone's race, or if they're a member of the LGBTQ community, or they have red hair, or a bad case of acne, or even a really bad taste in shoes! There is no excuse for murder, and that's final.

 

And yet, here these jackasses were, saying that they killed Matthew because he was 'coming onto them' and that he 'got scared' and so it was perfectly fine to shoot him with his pistol and then knock him on the head with the pistol's blunt end, a force so strong that's probably where half of Matthew's injuries came from.

 

And I know I can't change the world, wave my magic wand and say, "Poof! You are no longer a hater of X, Y, and Z," but I just wish that people could, yeah, have these thoughts.

 

But what is wrong with this world is that we don't keep these to ourselves. We shout it out, making the discriminated feel like crap (understatement) until they're so beaten down they just accept it and live with it.

 

And you know what else? That's. Just. Not. Okay. It's just not okay!!

 

This is the bottom line, my main point of this blog post:

 

Ignorance is one of the main reasons why we have such a hard time with discriminators. People listen to the stereotypes, breathe in rumors about said person, and then form this universal image of what those types of people look like, act like, behave like, and how 'different' they are from themselves.

 

They are not different. They aren't. They're exactly just like you, just born liking their same sex, or born being black, or etc., etc., etc. And I'll tell you something: you're just as bad as everyone else every time you make a 'joke' about people who are 'different' from you, or entertain a rumor that is obviously not true.

 

Though you may not mean to do it, you are contributing to the problem, plain and simple. So don't do it. Make the time to actually meet someone, form your own opinion, one that stems from an actual knowledge of who the person is.

 

'Cause I'll tell you one thing: when you do, you will see exactly-and I mean exactly-what I mean when I say that.

 

So next time you judge someone, ask yourself what you really know about that person. Not what you've been told; what you really, truly know.

 

And I can guarantee it isn't much.