Nothing good will come of this

People who walk into random businesses or public places and open fire on innocents usually aren’t disposed to rational discourse or long-term planning, but Floyd Lee Corkins’ shooting of a security guard at the headquarters of the Family Research Council (allegedly accompanied by his declaration of “I don’t like your politics”) will surely do nothing but backfire. This wasn’t just needlessly violent and intolerably destructive – it will also prove to have been actively counterproductive.

The FRC and all other anti-gay right-wing groups that share its goals won’t hesitate to exploit this incident to portray themselves as the real victims in their ongoing fight against liberal values. NOM is already at it, demanding that bigoted, hateful groups no longer be called “bigoted” or “hateful” or “hate groups” because apparently that will cause people to shoot them (raising the question of why exactly it took so long for that to happen even once). I fully expect that they’ll continue bringing this up for the foreseeable future whenever they find it convenient to make supporters of gay rights look like maniacs who want to kill them – which is to say, always.

And every single time they milk this for more sympathy, we’ll be obliged to recite ad nauseam that yes, we unambiguously deplore all violence, no, this is never an acceptable approach to civil debate in the public sphere, yes, this was a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the victim, no, this man does not represent what we stand for… and so on. Meanwhile, they’ll continue working to criminalize our relationships, ban our marriages, tear apart our families, exclude us from full participation in our society, depict us as child abusers, and fight tooth and nail against our progress at every step. And now, they’ll be forcing us to apologize along the way.

You wounded more than just one person yesterday, Floyd.

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Nothing good will come of this
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13 thoughts on “Nothing good will come of this

  1. 1

    AFA (Acting Fundamentally Absurd) has already jumped on, posting blog articles about how they’re being persecuted. It’s nothing new, of course. You’re right. This will not help things, but in the long run I don’t think it will hurt the cause, because they already had a rampant persecution complex, and it’s impossible to notice a single snowflake in a blizzard.

  2. 2

    They’re not being persecuted, they’re being beaten in the court of public opinion.

    And that may be the saddest part of this whole affair–marriage equality and love are ALREADY winning. This insane attack will just help them hold out longer before admitting defeat.

  3. 3

    Is the name of the injured guard available? I would like to make the distinction between the guard who actually did something and got shot while doing his job, and the hate group that signs his (probably pathetic) paycheck.

  4. 4

    The extreme cynic in me thinks this is not going to give the anti-gay groups much ammunition because for one, no one died to give them a martyr (thank goodness), and liberal and gay rights groups generally do not deal in the type of hateful rhetoric conservative groups regularly do.

    Have any pro-gay groups organized a fundraiser for the victim’s medical costs yet?

    1. 5.1

      That it took so long to happen is evidence that we are less crazy than they are. And that we have addressed this incident with mostly a wall of quick and stern condemnation, we have taken measures to assure that events like this are less likely to happen in the future.

  5. 7

    Is it really surprising that nearly all of the shooting has been right-on-left crime? Look at the kind of rhetoric each side uses. Look at how much respect each side has for rational discourse and for all people. The really surprising thing to me is that there’s been any left-on-right crime at all.

    Perhaps Corkins will turn out to be another clear-cut looney like Loughner or Holmes. The purchase of 15 Chick-Fil-A sandwiches seems awfully peculiar – why would he want to do business with them?

  6. 11

    If any good *could* come of this, it would be a broader understanding that gun crime affects everybody, and that anyone can be a perpetrator or a victim; the real problem is the accessibility of guns in the first place.

    Well, that’s probably never going to happen, but I live in hope.

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