Isn’t it amazing how those who have not experienced the conditions others have lived with are so ready and willing to explain to others that they do not understand their own conditions.

I have lost count of the number of times I have had what it means to be Gay explained to me by Straight people because, apparently, being Gay and having had to deal with what that means and the treatment that has resulted from what is a largely Heterosexual and oftentimes dismissive society, I really do not understand my life experiences.

I also cannot recall the number of times I have been stopped while explaining some lived  experience with the discounting phrase which translates to “I really do not want to deal with reality, so I will push it aside by asking, yeah, but what about?”

What follows that is usually some irrelevant reference that is in no way connected to what I have been saying.

Those who are taking a knee at football games are doing it because they want a discussion to begin about racial injustice in this country that the majority White population has never experienced, and, so, claims it really does not exist. Those in power do not want to enter into that discussion as it may be uncomfortable, so they promote the idea that the real issue is disrespect of the veterans, you know, those people whose benefits have been cut, who commit suicide at a horrendous rate, and many of whom are homeless while politicians ignore that, and whose situation can be hidden by a pre-game fighter jet flyover and an oversized flag.

Those who accept the deflection do not know how injurious such deflection is to the issue at hand and those attempting to bring attention to it, as well as to any positive results that could come from honest discussion.

Gay students being treated as equal to Straight students was an uncomfortable topic in the Buckle of the Bible Belt in the last years of the last millennium and the opening years of this one, and besides the need for religion to have an enemy to use to scare people to Jesus, there were those in the school district’s administration who saw support of the right thing as a detriment to possible advancement to a higher paying position, or that guilt by association with the right thing could kill the career already held.

It would have been immoral for people in education to actually fight against equal treatment and creating a safe learning environment for students who historically did not have that, so opposition had to be couched in something that could act as a distraction.

It had to be something that most people would object to.

While the issue was to also protect Gay students from bullying, harassment, and discrimination, and who could possibly object to the elimination  of students having to deal with that on a daily basis, it was a matter of strategy to equate any discussion of the equality of these students with advocating sex.

These students finally did get protections, and eight years after this the school district actually had a  presence in the local GLBT Pride Parade, but during the time honest discussion should have been held, pastors went into their pulpits and told their congregations that they needed to go to the local high school to voice their objections to the class being held that instructed students on how to be Gay and to get the teacher of that class fired.

The fear of being associated with the imagined and promoted misinformation that perversion was being taught motivated the principal to issue and enforce policies that forbade supplying any and all positive information about those like them and they themselves to Gay students, while not correcting the misinformation and distraction. The fear of the loss of possible advancement was enough to motivate others, two being Lesbians, to cooperate with this.

The actual topic at hand was allowed to be supplanted by the angry discussion that NAMBLA had no place in the schools, nor did the teacher who was not only teaching the non-existent class, but who obviously was attempting to have more students wanting to try being Gay so that he would have a ready crop of captive victims.

What the teacher was actually attempting, a good thing that people would have agreed with, could not be dealt with because of the time and energy it was taking to wage a battle against the nonexistent, and to convince people that that was what it was all about.

Meanwhile, the actual need to ensure that GLBT students were protected from bullying, harassment, and discrimination, was being ignored.

It was only when, rather than blindly continuing to condemn something from the pulpit that the pastors came to the school to protest and were, therefore, compelled to hear the facts and deal with them, that some very embarrassed pastors had to ask forgiveness from their flocks whom they had misled and riled up, and had to admit to themselves and their congregations that the actual topic, protecting the young ana vulnerable from harm, was Christian in nature.
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Oh, there were some pastors and politicians who continued to insist it was all about perverted sex, but as time went on, their insistence made it clear that the actual perversion was what was in their own minds, not what existed outside, and their insistence on promoting a falsehood was what was perverse.

But for a while the teacher had to deal with false accusations, not only about what was happening in his classroom but in his imagined personal life, and with treatment beyond school that would not have existed without the distraction and if the actual topic was actually the one being dealt with.

Eventually discussion did get back on topic, but not before a second attempt to eliminate the teacher, killing the message by killing the messenger, blew up in the face of its perpetrators, and reality could no longer be ignored.

Hence, the protective language and then parade participation.

The NFL players are not disrespecting the flag, what it stands for, or the troops who are sent into questionable wars to defend it.

We are being told to ignore why they choose to do what they are doing, and, instead, let others tell us their reason.

If their reason for taking a knee, opposing and bringing attention to racial injustice, is the same as  disrespecting those things, then those things must stand for racial injustice.

Those making and promoting that connection are the ones being disrespectful to the flag, the country, and the men and women in uniform especially when, in order to discredit the actual reason for the kneeling, they have to drag in the troops and vets who are not otherwise a part of it.

I am not responsible for anyone’s misunderstanding of a simple issue while turning a deaf ear to clarification, or their desire to deal with something while pretending there is a connection where any reasonable person would acknowledge there is none.

Nor will I discuss a new irrelevant topic or try to answer objections to that which is not the topic to begin with.

When I was doing a political cartoon blog for a local news web page, there were two people who in the comment section would ignore my topic, tell me that I should have drawn and written about something else, and then attempt to lure me into a discussion usually based on what they told me was my opinion on their topic.

I never bit.

The same is happening with the kneeling. Donald Trump does not want to discuss racial injustice as he assumes it is not a topic his supporters would want to deal with. This is exposed when he promotes the idea that white supremacists are good people while members of NFL teams who oppose racial injustice are “sons of bitches”, and then attempts to conflate their concern with a hated of country.

A safe learning environment for Gay students was not support of NAMBLA.

Wanting to eradicate racial injustice is not disrespecting America.