Inclusion/Exclusion

Have a caution now, do, with those innocent tweets, expressing random thoughts. They may come back to haunt you. FaceBook, Twitter, any kind of social media expression has people uttering their thoughts and feelings and perceptions for all and sundry to become aware of. Of course there are countless millions of those incidental thoughts whom few ever notice. But if you happen to be someone of note, a celebrity, a public persona, however remote, what you say will be noted.

And so what, actually? If you're sincere and refrain from being horribly abusive and profanely insulting, merely adding your voice to a discussion of sorts, haven't you the right to do so? Depends. It depends on who you happen, however respectively - or disrespectfully - to be referring to. There was once a time when it was societally forbidden to express any opinions that were felt to be demeaning, critical or insulting to the Church.

Now, anything goes; religion has become a butt of humour, some of it very ill humour, much of it profane, but acceptable, because we live in a free and open society. It just depends on which religion one seeks to degrade; some are still off limits, and they're not the ones most familiar and most traditionally practised. And now there are some groups, say for example, gays, whom one must not criticize for they are too psychically frail to take the hits.

Not that they weren't dreadfully persecuted and oppressed by society in general for far too long. And not that it wasn't high time for the tide to be reversed, for gays and other non-conforming gender-role-structured groups to be viewed with the respect that the everyday 'normal' heterosexual majority receives. Which also comes replete with gleeful jabs now and again.

But when newly-sacred-position groups behave in a manner that is clearly outrageously silly, they become objects of derision. Or, in the case of gay couples insisting on the sacraments of marriage for same-sex partners, hushed acquiescence. There are many people in mainstream society who have no issue with gays, accepting them with the same nonchalance that anyone else is viewed with; a regular part of society.

And among them are many who think it is utterly nonsensical for same-sex couples to be joined in holy matrimony, a state of connubial bliss meant by tradition to produce offspring in the furtherance of the human race. There are other symbolic measures that can be taken to ensure that same-sex partners are assured of equal treatment under the law without up-ending the tradition of the marriage contract.

It's no big deal perhaps, but it also rankles some peoples' sensitivities. So, haven't they the right to state this to be so? Evidently not. And what they they undergo is another kind of persecution and oppression, the public societal sting of rejection for their difference of opinion. Which is precisely what happened to Damian Goddard, fired from Sportsnet after tweeting his opinion that only marriage between a man and woman represents a "true" marriage.

Exchanging one set of victims for another in the interests of inclusion, resulting in exclusion.