Sometimes, I wish I took the time to put together and update a blog, so I’d have somewhere to compile musings about the latest in political correctness, a place to find humor with the unnecessarily offended and the seemingly perpetually victimized.
Since I haven’t created that blog, you’ll get it here.
News item: Last week at the St. Louis Rams-Arizona Cardinals football game, the “Kiss Cam” was aimed at two male Arizona fans, and remained there for several seconds. Since then, Pride St. Louis – a pro-gay organization, and Just John’s, a local gay bar – have complained, asserting the Rams unfairly placed gays in a negative light.
The groups have since lobbied the St. Louis Cardinals to put gay couples on the Jumbotron during baseball games in addition to the heterosexual couples they show.
So they want gay couples shown on the video screen. But how to do it?
What puzzled me about this controversy is how this gay group actually thinks they will be able to encourage such a policy.
Furthermore, I fail to see how this is really something gays want to push. I was under the assumption that the gay community wanted to break down stereotypes aimed toward them.
How then, is one supposed to decide who is gay and who isn’t?
That’s some kind of burden to place on the camera man: Should he aim the camera at the two short-haired women in section 246? What about the two guys with popped collars and spiked hair? Could they be gay? Look there, two guys in skinny jeans drinking lattes at a sporting event. They’re a slam-dunk!
Go ahead and add in whichever overused stereotype you want. Any way you go, it’s an exercise in futility, because the gay community wants it both ways.
According to them, you’re either a bigot for being ‘close-minded’ and not showing them, or you’re a bigot for stereotyping them.
You can’t win – which is why I suspect the Cardinals will have none of it.
If members of Pride St. Louis ever wondered why their group irritates many in the area, they need look no further than this issue.
I was at the Rams game last week, and saw the guys on the Jumbotron. I thought was funny, and about 52,000 other people in the dome sure thought it was, too. Humor is really all the Kiss Cam is meant for, anyway.
You’re in a TV timeout, so they show some old guy give his wife a smooch. Some girl gleefully plants one on her teenage boyfriend. It’s all in good fun, and that’s all it’s supposed to be.
But that’s not good enough anymore.
All of a sudden, Kiss Cam is intolerant. Heterosexual fans are not open-minded. We have somehow wronged someone in some way.
The gay community has found a way to hijack frivolous stadium fun and use it as a vehicle to push a social agenda. They have managed to play the victim card to new depths.
If Pride St. Louis and its like-minded groups were looking for fewer attacks, this is not the way to go. By positioning themselves in ‘victim’ mode over such a pointless issue, they only bring on further ridicule. Fortunately for them – and the rest of the fan base – this is an issue that will likely be put to rest shortly.
If pushed to show gay couples on the video screen, I find it much more likely for the Cardinals and Rams to forgo the Kiss Cam gimmick entirely. Alienating the many to please the few just isn’t worth it.
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