Homo H8?

I'm about to open a can of worms.  But it's my blog, so if I want worms all over it, that's my prerogative.

I believe homosexuality is sin.  I believe it is wrong.  I do not want gay marriage to be widely legalized.  There.  Now that that's out of the way, this post isn't really about my beliefs on that subject, but I wanted to just go ahead and put them out there, because I don't want to dance around that question the whole post.  Onward with what I really wanted to post...

I go to E! Online and get my celebrity fix every other day or so.  Today, I came across this article about the NO H8 campaign.  It was the first I'd heard of it and was curious.  I Googled it and read a little bit and saw some more of the photos.  I was starting to get perturbed, but decided I needed to learn more before I jumped to conclusions about what the duct tape across the mouth meant.  As I continued to research, my first gut reaction was confirmed and I had to do a quick post.

I believe the photo below is the photographer himself, Adam Bouska, if I'm not mistaken.

There are different interpretations of what the duct tape means, but before I even address that.  I think the  8 in the NO H8 slogan is very clever way to reference to Proposition 8 (The California Marriage Protection Act), but I don't think the creator is being fair by using the word "hate" to describe the result of a fair vote that didn't go the way a group of people wanted it to.  There are always majorities and minorities in votes.  The minority doesn't win.  So that means the majority HATES the minority?  No.  It just means the minority doesn't have enough voices yet.

Speaking of voices, now to address the duct tape.  It can be interpreted a couple of ways.  I read that some people think it means that this is a silent protest of the "hating" that's going on toward gays.  Wouldn't that be kind-of redundant though, since a photograph is inherently silent?  Still others (and this was my gut reaction) feel that it means that the people "hating" need to be silenced.  Once again, I don't feel like this was really well thought through.  I'm going to give the creator the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't mean for me to read into this all that I did.

But what comes to your mind when you think about a person's mouth being duct taped?  Just play the game with me.  First thing that comes to your mind...   Kidnapping? torture? ... these are extreme, but I'm just saying.  When else is duct tape used over the mouth?  I didn't vote obviously, but if I had, I would have been on the side voting against gay marriage.  

I do not hate gay people, but I am labeled as such and (silently) requested to put duct tape over my own mouth (or maybe they wish to put it there for me?) and support something I don't believe in just to prove I don't hate gay people.  Since when is voting on one side of an issue hating the people that vote on the other side of it?  Since when is voting not a fair way to determine the laws in our country?  Since when is it acceptable by a wide range of people, including Cindy McCain (surprising to me) to want one side of an issue to have no voice?

Isn't the problem that gays feel they don't have a voice?  that they don't have a fair say?  The solution is not to wish a different group the same unfairness they imagine to have.

And here's another article that takes a completely different, possibly less controversial, twist on how the whole campaign just seems to be self promotion of beautiful people under the guise of a "good cause."  Really, their cause is getting less attention or effective action since the voters are who they really would need to get ahold of and the voters who voted against gay marriage probably wouldn't be influenced by hundreds of unoriginal photos.  Just sayin'.