I Hate Hate

I've been trying to weed through a big pile of books and videos I've meant to read/watch for some time now. It's funny how life has a way of sometimes giving you themes serendipitously. Like when you come across a new word in a book and then you hear it in conversation and on tv and then read it in the paper all in the next week.

So the unexpected theme for this week is hate. I finally watched the film version of "The Laramie Project". Wow. Powerful movie. While I was familiar with many of the story's details, I was not familiar with the angel activist group that has come out of it. What an incredible response to the folks that continue to spread hate and bigotry to the gay community even after this horrible crime was committed in Laramie.

Yesterday I finally got around to watching a PBS show from a couple years ago called "Not In Our Town".
This particular episode centered around hate crimes in Northern California, where I grew up.

I'd been drawn to it because of its account of two murders that took place in my hometown in 1999 of two gay men, one of whom my family knew. Their story, though horrifying to digest, was important to learn about and was well-documented in this show.

But this show wove together several hate crimes that took place in the "Summer of Hate" in Northern California in 1999. One of the other stories told was of the murder of a transgendered teenager named Gwen Araujo in Newark, CA. What fascinated me was what the drama department of Newark High School was rehearsing at the time of Gwen's death, The Laramie Project. And the network of angels that had served as a barricade between hate and support? It showed up again in Newark on opening night, when protesters came to degrade the homosexual lifestyle yet again.

Upon viewing these shows I found that I was asking myself a lot of questions. Why do people do these things? How can these hate crimes be stopped? Is there a solution? And I started feeling really depressed about human behavior and that while the majority of people are good and want to do good, weapons are just so darn powerful and decisive for some people to use.

It's easy to get bogged down in those kinds of thoughts, but I am comforted, too, by the actions that I see people taking in response to the tragedies that happened in their communities. Hopefully someday these collaborative efforts won't have to be in response to some catastrophe, but can happen because it makes sense for different groups to come together to learn from and about each other.