After the first two weeks of blogging for this class, I started to get nervous. What if I run out of controversial things to talk about? I'm used to blogging about politics when things come up, not three times a week. But then International Forum went into full swing.
First, can I just say how absolutely ridiculous most of that class is? The people, not the curriculum (because -shocker- there is no curriculum!) They don't listen to anything the "other side" is saying, and they have absolutely no basis for most of their opinions.
And yesterday, they made a statement that is worth nothing short than being crowing "The Most Vacuous Opinion Evar".
Someone was giving a presentation about Uganda and the media, and one of their class discussion questions regarded the new Anti-Gay bill. I briefly discussed this in one of my previous blogs, but I'd like to respond to something further, after comments that were made yesterday.
The people in my class seem to be, again, under the impression that this is not our problem. "It's cultural." they argued. "We have no right to intervene." Normally, I would agree.
However, here is the biggest problem with their statement.
It's not cultural, because it was introduced by- here's a shocker- the US. From the San Fransisco Chronicle: "The Times notes that back in March, Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge, and Don Schmierer shared their "wisdom" on homosexuality with thousands at a conference in Kampala, Uganda. Specifically, the men told the audience:
... how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how 'the gay movement is an evil institution' whose goal is 'to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.'
A few weeks later, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (PDF) was introduced."
But I promised that I would crown "The Most Vacuous Opinion Evar", so let's do that now.
I raised my hand to point out the glaring similarities between killing people because they're homosexual and WW2. "It was our problem then, so why isn't it our problem now?"
A boy promptly responded. "Hitler invaded our allies."
There it is, folks, "The Most Vacuous Opinion Evar". Apparently, the only reason we stopped Hitler's genocide of the Jews and the homosexuals was because he invaded our allies. If he hadn't, whatevs.
Not our problem.
What a world we live in.
Actually, he was partially right. WWII started because Hitler invaded Poland. America entered the war because Japan bombed Pearl harbor. (There's more to it than that, but that's what it boils down to.) We didn't know about the genocide until later, and even then we mostly left them for the Soviets to free. Also, America chose not to be a part of the only international organization empowered or justified to stop genocide. That was politics.
ReplyDeleteI must agree with you, however, if the individual in question was unaware of these facts and simply felt that genocide was not our problem. That would deserve a crown.