bigotry

This is a drastic idea, so bear with me until the end before you exercise your biases to conclude that I am wrong:

I'm becoming increasingly fed up with society's effort to label bigots as being, not only "wrong", but even evil. There's nothing “wrong”, per se, with bigotry. There is something wrong with systemic bigotry; social institutions must be exorcised, as much as it is possible, of prejudice in order that all citizens function within society on an equal footing. But individuals have the inherent right to believe whatever they so choose (or are conditioned or manipulated) to believe, and to systematically attempt to deny them that right (which is what our government and its cultural counterparts are trying to do) is acting in a prejudicial manner toward the individual bigot (by, for example, establishing harsher, more discriminating penalties for "hate crimes"; all people should be punished equally for their (pre-defined) bad actions, regardless of race, creed, color, gender, or degree of bigotry).

Everyone whether s/he wants to believe it or not, is prejudiced. It's a fact of human psychological nature. You cannot get away from it. Even the most "advanced"-thinking liberal who tries to see the best in every person discriminates between individuals. (To deny this premise is to discriminate, thereby exhibiting a prejudice toward its obverse.) Bigots have every right to believe as they do, and who are you to try to deny them that right? To do so is to deny the basic freedoms given to us by natural law. Bigots, of course, do not have a right to act upon their beliefs so as to deny others their rights and restrict their freedoms, no more than you have a right to restrict theirs.

The tipping point here is: What constitutes "behavior"? Are ideas expressed in fact acts as opposed to mere beliefs? It's a sticky point. I want to think that they are not; much case law says that in some significant sense they are. I was taught that in this country we have freedom of speech. I was not taught that the freedom of speech that we are guaranteed by our constitution is limited or that freedom of speech is a relative concept. This is a failure of my education. Black and white-minded teachers (my parents included), as a result of their own poor education and prejudice, failed to instill in me a sense of social, cultural, and physical relativity (and I myself, being autistic, failed to intuit and absorb it from my observations and perceptions of social interaction, as many intelligent and/or educated people do). To this day I must continually guard against falling back into a rigid, didactic, either/or, black-or-white mentality. The world, the universe, is not black and white, but many shades of gray; in fact, throw all of the various hues and tones of color in there too while you're at it.

To be safe, to safely guard our rights and freedoms, as with the presumption of innocence, it is best to err on the side of beliefs. Unless an idea/belief is both overtly an act with concrete, demonstrable, and negative consequences, it should be considered a mere belief and should be exempt from actionable decisions against it. Bigots are people too. And every single person, even the most liberal, accepting, caring one, has within at least a tiny spark of bigotry that, given the right (or wrong) circumstances might grow into a flaming inferno of hatred. It's our right by natural law to feel the way we do, though we must be careful how we act on those feelings, because society itself can be as much of a prejudicial prick as any single human being can. And just as there is safety in numbers, so is their danger for those who are not included among the numbered group.

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