What year is it again?

This post Why I'm Afraid To Go Outside Sometimes written by my friend latimer84 in response to the assault on a gay man in Butler, NJ really breaks my heart into a million piece.

It also enrages me because once again, if a gay man is assaulted he's obviously at fault because he OBVIOUSLY was making overtures towards a straight man and brought it on himself. Our culture has become frighteningly talented at victim-blaming. Never mind that in some places, just breathing the same air apparently counts as unwanted flirtation to some Neanderthals.

And yes, if you do that to a human being because they complimented you on having a nice coat - you disqualify from humanity and are a cave-dwelling, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal as far as I'm concerned.

There's no excuse for this. Let's say that this man did make a pass at someone. You know what you do when someone makes a pass at you and you're not interested? You polite say, "Sorry, not my type, dude" and walk away. Now if that person keeps harassing you after that, you call the cops or walk away or get help.

But at no point do you to send somebody to the hospital, even if they were hitting on you. Even if he stood up on the table in the goddamn restaurant and shouted, "Hey, you wanna come home with me, sexy!" - that doesn't give you the fucking right to do that to anyone. Ever.

There is no such thing as gay panic. There's just straight bigotry. There's just some really horrible straight people who see that GLBT folks dare to exist - and even more gallingly, exist proudly and openly - and feel they have some right to do something about it.