At the 2009 Gay Pride Festival in Minneapolis, a man named Adam Schreifels was leaving a parade when he was approached by a swarm of young boys from Somalia. They asked him if he was gay and when he answered in the affirmative they started taunting him with racial epithets, then throwing rocks. He ignored them as best he could and laughed it off.
A friend of his videotaped the entire incident, and posted that video on YouTube. It sparked a flurry of comments mostly anti-Islamic and anti-Somalian. Eventually Adam posted a second video where he urged his supporters not to exacerbate the situation with more hate.
If there is one thing in this world I will not tolerate, it is intolerance.
My mother taught me not to be a racist, which is surprising, because she’s turned out to be a bit of a racist herself. She’s not overt about it, but you can just hear that sneer in her voice when she says the word “black.” It’s the same tone she uses when talking about Barack Obama, who she doesn’t have a nice thing to say about, but I get the feeling she’s skirting around the real reason she doesn’t like him. I guess you can take the girl out of Jasper, Texas, but you can’t take Jasper, Texas out of the girl.
I abhor any form of intolerance, whether directed at any race, religion, ideology, political affiliation, nationality, sexual orientation, or which way you let the toilet paper hang on the roller. Even if someone’s skin is a different color, or they follow a different god if any, or they voted for somebody else, or they like to sleep with their own gender and/or the opposite … these are not the things that define us. What defines us is what we put out into the world, and if we all go around spewing hate at everybody else, then it’s going to come right back to us.
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