Miss Manners and Her Mission of Tough Love

Excuse me, but why do so many gay and lesbian people put up with such abominably rude behavior from straights?

Notice very carefully what I'm asking. I'm not asking why so many straights are so rude to us (they get away with it most of the time, so why shouldn't they be?). I am asking why we put up with it.

Every once in a while, a straight person will make a remark to me about "my lifestyle" (about which he or she knows nothing), or about "what I do in bed" (about which he or she has no right to know anything). Or this fool will make any number of other boorish and ignorant remarks, to me, because I am gay. Why are they so accustomed to thinking they can get away with this?

Sometimes, on a TV talk show, a noted gay person will appear alongside a noted anti-gay person. The encounter is not always unpleasant, but occasionally the anti-gay person gets not only rude, but downright abusive. Now, the gay person almost always remains calm. And as far as I am concerned, this is sainthood in action.

If I were treated like that on a talk show, at the first commercial break I would inform my antagonist that the next time it happened, he would get the back of my hand all the way across the studio. This would end the problem right there. Would it be saintly? Probably not. But some people need tough love.

"Spare the rod and spoil the child" is evidently something the parents of most contemporary adults did not believe. I find it amusing that so many social conservatives claim to believe in corporal punishment for children. And, given their own behavior, I can only assume it's because they never got it themselves.

I simply don't put up with rudeness. Not from anybody. I am Miss Manners on Steroids, and I am on a mission of tough love.

Gay folks, start standing up for yourselves. Most of your would-be antagonists are cowards. If they know you aren't going to take their crap, they will not try to give you any. Very few of the rude straight people I have encountered were ever told, by anybody before me, that they were being rude.

Back in Christ's day, kids would have gotten the shitfire thrashed out of them for speaking to others the way so many so-called adults talk to other people today. "Turn the other cheek" still definitely has meaning, but in an era when the average adult has the manners of a chimpanzee, sometimes the kindest thing you can do for people is to tell them how foolish their behavior really is.

I don't believe corporal punishment is cruel in the least. And I'll gladly administer it to anybody who demonstrates to me that they need it.