Stand Up, Speak Up, Wake Up.

I have been thinking about Jorge Steven Mercado's murder for a few days. To call it senseless, evil, ignorant, a waste and unsettling is redundant, but it's the language that surrounds the story that I want to examine.

I have been watching and reading the news, and all the articles say that "Jorge Steven Mercado was murdered because he was gay". See, I have to disagree. Jorge Steven Mercado was NOT murdered because he was gay, he was murdered because some ignorant, bigoted slab of protoplasm had a problem with the fact that he was gay.
And in this lies a big problem. To say that someone was murdered BECAUSE they were gay implies some form of complicity on behalf of the dead that simply didn't exist. He was gay. Full stop. The end. It is not a murderable offense. It is not even an offense.

It is this slippery semantic slope that leaves me uneasy.

"The country isn't ready for Marriage Equality". "The armed forces are not ready to end DADT". "The school systems are not ready for integration." Whoops... that's an old one, but it's the same tired old warhorse of an argument that no long holds water.

If someone or some group is not ready to welcome sweeping equality, then that is their problem and their issue that perhaps they should spend time working on. Why is it still up to the person who wants to serve in the military--who wants to marry the love of their life... etc... to pay the bill?
In this era--fresh though it is, of post Matthew Shepard Act, why is it that the the people bending over backwards are the ones that are discriminated against?
It's high time that the people dragging their feet over this issue, desist with their pose of moderation and either come out swinging or just shut the hell up. I aver, once again, that it is not up to the majority to decide the rights of the minority and that being so, just get out of the way of the inevitable. Eventually, we get it right. Generally, the country makes an international fool out of itself (the entire presidency of George Bush, for example) but after the posturing and braying, somehow we eventually--and usually quietly, get it right.

Saying that someone was murdered because they were gay seems to somehow let some of the pressure off of the murderer. "Oh, well, he had a reason". Clearly he did have a reason, but the reason was not the fault of Jorge Steven Mercado. The reason was that someone's personal evil won the battle for their soul. And directly under the sadness of Jorge Steven Mercado's murder is the sadness of that lurking evil in his murderer not being called out earlier, dealt with and/or exposed.

I used to keep very quiet about a lot of things. I always will because constantly braying is obnoxious and I think that there is still a place for dignity in the world, but when silence leads to wholesale discounting of the rights of individuals and those rights being run into the ground, I don't think that the reason for silence any longer is diginity. It is cowardice.

I have been guilty of it, but knowing how and more importantly WHEN to stand up for myself is a nice legacy left by this young man whom I have never met. So... thanks to Jorge Steven Mercado. I never knew you, but I will think of you the next time I weigh whether to be silent or to come out swinging myself.