starting a war...

Oops I may have started a fa.ce.bo.ok war...

It all started when two of my friends were featured in a local family magazine for a story on two mum families. It was a bit nerve wracking because despite their request not to include full names, their full names, and the full name of their son was included all over the article.

The next issue the editor included a particularly nasty letter from someone ranting and raving about how perverted same sex families are. She (the editor) wrote a lovely letter about how all families are equal in their eyes and that beauty is in difference. I lent the magazine my full public support in how they handled it.

The issue obviously hit a few buttons as a number of letters were posted in the months that followed (mostly positive). We thought the whole debacle was over, until I picked up the most recent issue and saw an entire page of "letters" spewing vitriolic hatred towards all same sex families. Without going into specifics, some particular gems included that same sex families are "assaulting the children's rights to a mother and a father" and that we are committing an "abuse of Human Rights under the Geneva convention" (??) and all sorts of other loveliness.

I felt absolutely sick.

So I commented to the editor on her FB that I was disappointed that she had chosen to endorse hate speech and discrimination. That she was endorsing their point of view and putting all our children at risk by doing so. That she was encouraging hatred.

She replied (days later) that she prints a cross section of letters, and that she cant ignore the other side of the argument.

WHAT ARGUMENT? There should BE no other side.

If I chose to write in and say "blacks shouldn't be allowed to have children", do you know how much trouble I would land in? What's the difference?

If I said that disabled people shouldn't be allowed to have children, they never would publish it.

NO ONE can tell anyone else who can, or who can not have children.

End. Of. Story.

The comments have been going back and forth for hours between her and I. I wanted to walk away but I just CAN'T.

My most recent (and hopefully final) comment was this:
If you stand by your decision to publish letters that endorse discrimination and hatred that is your decision, you are the editor, that is your choice.

(and I have lodged a complaint with the Equal Opportunities Commission in my state and am encouraging everyone I know to do the same)

Her response could be interesting.