Do Americans hate us? The only people I’ve been verbally and physically assaulted by have been Americans.
Have you ever spent time in a middle eastern country and been visibly “out”? (I’m assuming you’re saying this in reference to existing somewhere on the lgbtq spectrum)
If the answer is no, but you have spent time in America, then I think this is a strange comment.
I have. Did aid work in the region. More than once actually. I’m gay as fuck. People welcomed me as much as the rest of the group. They were some of the kindest people I’ve met. People aren’t a monolith. I’m sure there were shitty people there too, just like there are shitty people in the west. People hate me and essentialize me everywhere. How does it make sense for me to do the same?
I could have very well have had a negative experience too btw. But if I did, I still wouldn’t condemn and entire people to die because of it. I’m not a coward.
I’ve never been out in Russia, but I know we’re persecuted there. Same for Poland. I’ve never been out in Uganda (I haven’t been there yet), and although I’ve been to India the social circles I moved in meant I didn’t encounter anything like what the community members find there.
What I find curious is that Americans use this as a lash particularly against Islam, while at the same time a large part of their population not only supports LGBT-phobic legislation in the US, but also the evangelical community that actively lobbies for the death penalty for being LGBT in Africa. I can sympathize with the plight of Russians under the violent and murderous dictatorship of Putin without saying that the average Russian is correct on their opinion about the LGBT community. If Russia were to invade Uganda and kill 50k civilians, there would be an outcry against it and anyone who said “But they hate The Gays” would hopefully be ushered peacefully out of the room, as the two are orthogonal.
Is Israel killing 40-50k people to secure gay rights in Gaza? Or have they been supporting Hamas because it allowed them to avoid a two state solution?
Trust me - we are not strangers to the idea that other oppressed communities have parts that are still prejudiced against us. That neither justifies genocide nor does it relieve us as individuals from acknowledging such extreme moral wrongdoing. If an unarmed person shot by police turned out to have opposed marriage equality, that doesn’t excuse the moral requirement to oppose that action.
So unless you think that anti-LGBT legislation and violence justifies terrorist activity including the slaughter of civilians within the US (it does not), I respectfully suggest you review your premises.
To be clear, what I said was “I think that’s a strange comment” to someone saying “Americans want to kill me” in comparison to those in the Middle East.
If you read that back carefully, you might notice that I was careful not to say “I support the systematic and brutal murder of millions of people” - that’s because, like any sane person, I see that what Israel are doing is abhorrent. I never argued or insinuated that lgbtq people should support the genocide of bigots, but again for the sake of clarity my position is that only a literal insane person could think that. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
So, with that said, your post that I responded to seems to imply that you think Americans (in general) hate you in the same way that many in the middle east hate you. To me, that is an incredibly naive view, and a very strange thing for someone who’s never lived there to make.
I think that it’s possible to condemn elements of a culture, in an honest way ie. that the Islamic attitude to LGB is worse than that in western countries, however bad western countries often are (for some reason I think there’s sometimes less hate for the T in Islamic culture) but pull short of supporting the worst elements of western culture (like islamophobia) and absolutely without endorsing literal war crimes.
