Should all Black folks and Gay folks be treated as if they are carrying AR-15s in public? [View all]

Ok, there's something about right wing gun mentality that I find quite disturbing whenever I encounter it here on DU.

That is the notion that Black folks and Gay folks should be treated as if they are carrying deadly weapons.

Treating Black folks and Gay folks better than the typical yahoo on the street toting an AR-15 is claimed to be a violation of civil rights.

We are expected to dial 911 as quickly upon sight of Black and Gay folks as we would upon sight of somebody in a restaurant or a college classroom with an AR-15.

Anything less is said to be disrespecting the civil rights of yahoos with AR-15s.

Personally, I find this inability to distinguish between human beings and deadly weapons rather racist and homophobic.

It treats Blacks and Gays as if they are deadly weapons, rather than as human beings.

Now, I understand that some yahoos with AR-15s might be offended if folks run away and flee for their lives. They might feel that their civil rights are being violated by people fleeing from their guns.

But that is no reason for them to label folks who run for their lives from guns as "thieves", especially when they know that there is a contingent of gun nuts who feel perfectly justified in shooting folks perceived as "thieves" that are running away. In that context, the labeling of people as "thieves" simply for running away seems particularly dangerous.

I know what it is like for people to leave a restaurant with the check unpaid after ordering because of your presence.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I celebrated our 16th Anniversary with a trip to Chicago and Niagara falls.

We got married in 1996, but we never actually had a honeymoon back then, so this was our big chance.

While in Chicago, we stopped at a Pizza Place.

Anyway, there were tables on the street in front of the place, so we sat there. So did a guy with what appeared to be his two sons. The waiter came around to his table and took his order. Soon after that, they all looked towards us, and gave us dirty looks. They got up and left without paying, after giving their order to the waiter, and just left the menus on the table, leaving the waiter to wonder what had happened.

We felt like we had AR-15s strapped to our backs or something, the way that they looked at us and scurried out of there after seeing us.

I mean, what were they so afraid of?

We didn't start calling them "thieves" and stuff like some folks here are so quick to do here when they think about the same thing happening to an AR-15.

We didn't like being treated as if we were deadly weapons simply because we are an interracial couple.

It is offensive and racist.

We are human beings, not deadly weapons, and we deserve to be treated as human beings, not as deadly weapons.

At least in our opinion we do. Some here may disagree. (And I know some do.)

Now, it didn't ruin our Anniversary, and we went on to Niagara Falls, but every time somebody says that running away from us is the same as running away from an AR-15, I think back to that day, and I realize that we are viewed as deadly weapons by some here at DU.

It may seem the same to some here who have difficulty distinguishing between human beings and deadly weapons, but to us, it feels much, much different.

30 years ago, in 1986, the US Supreme Court made an infamous homophobic ruling in Bowers v Hardwick. (Later overturned in Lawrence v Texas.) It was also the year that I moved to Baltimore for graduate school. The next year, in 1987, I was fortunate to be living in the area and to be able to participate in the Gay Rights March on Washington in opposition to that ruling. In conjunction with the march, 481 of us engaged in a nonviolent civil disobedience, sitting on the steps of the US Supreme Court demanding that Bowers be overturned. We were arrested and held for 48 hours before being released from custody.

None of the folks arrested on those steps was a deadly weapon, although they were sometimes considered as such. (Cops used to wear rubber gloves while making arrests, for example.) They were all human beings.

Treating Gays as deadly weapons was offensive then, and it is just as offensive now.

And it is a direct slap in the face to every Gay person sitting on the steps of the Supreme Court that day.

We've never been in a restaurant with ammosexuals before, but we've come within 2 weeks of such a thing happening. Two weeks after we ate at one restaurant, people entered the restaurant with their guns and kidnapped somewhere between 75 and 100 people.

A couple of years later, we visited the site (the restaurant closed after the mass kidnapping by the ammosexuals), and friends showed us where a couple of the customers had managed to escaped to safety (a euphemism for sliding down a frickin' cliff! Lots of mountains there). They were sharp enough to notice the guns early and they run away quickly. Dozens of others weren't so lucky.

But they got away. Because they ran at the first sight of the guns.

It's not the same thing to run away from deadly weapons as to run away from people simply because of their race or sexual orientation.

It's just not the same, and folks here who repeatedly and enthusiastically claim that it is the same are being racist and homophobic in the extreme, IMNSHO.

People run from deadly weapons for a reason. Some might not agree with that reason, but they shouldn't act like it is for no reason.

People who run from somebody because they are Black or Gay or because they are an interracial couple are racist and homophobic assholes.

But that's just my opinion. What's yours?

Should all Black folks and Gay folks be treated as if they are carrying AR-15s in public?