There is also no denying that, as a general rule, citizens in the U.S. are particularly sensitive to injustice, and are easily moved to right wrongs. The media is permeated with the sympathetic airing of grievances, stories of Good Samaritans, accounts of heroism, protests against abuse, criminal and civil prosecution, and the like.
And, to their credit, liberals tend to be quite vocal against perpetrators, and active in their empathy for the victims. They have lead the charge against racism, domestic violence, child abuse, corporate corruption, destruction of the environment, and on and on. In many respects this is very good.
However, liberals also have a tendency to take things too far, and at times to use victimization to define groups of people so that the groups perpetually see themselves as victims, and continue to play the victim, easily manipulated by the Left. Liberals have a way of creating cults of victimization that unwittingly produce Leftist LUNCs that perpetually victimize.the once victims. (see Micro-Aggression and Culture of Victimhood)
And, if that weren't enough, like with the politics of compassion, the Left has even exploited victimization to manipulate and bully in the pursuit of self-serving political ends. They have used victimizations to victimize their opponents. The once protectors have become perpetrators. This is not good, and also the cause of Leftist LUNCs.
The exploitation of homosexual victimization is personified in Matthew Shepherd, "...the winsome young homosexual in Laramie, Wyoming who in October 1998 was tortured, killed, and left hanging grotesquely from a fence. He was discovered almost a day later and later died in the hospital from his horrific wounds....Almost immediately Shepard became a secular saint, and his killing became a kind of gay Passion Play where he suffered and died for the cause of homosexuality against the growing homophobia and hatred of gay America....Thanks to a new book by an award winning gay journalist we now know that much of this narrative turns out to be false, little more than gay hagiography." (See HERE)
Along the same line, liberals have attempted to quail the violence committed by heterosexuals against homosexuals. This is great, and had they gone no further in this regard, all may have been well. But, they didn't. Liberals have used and abused the plight of homosexuals to: 1) stereotypically sling the unwarranted arrows of "homophobia" against individuals and whole groups of innocent people who haven't kowtowed to liberal ideology; 2) beat corporations over the head who didn't quickly bend to liberal social agendas (most notably the Chik-fil-a protests--see HERE and HERE and HERE); and 3) manipulate the public, politicians, and even judges, into mangling the several millennium-old, once meaningful and valued definition of marriage. (Just because a thousand or so homosexuals are regrettably harassed or beat up each year--see HERE, doesn't mean that they, as a group, should be allowed to legally marry, any more than thousands of children in grade schools across the country who have been bullied, means that grade school kids as a group should be allowed to drive cars.)
Worse yet, in their haste to beat up on their opponents and conveniently advance their agendas, liberals have selectively focused on relatively less prevalent acts of victimization of homosexual at the expense of far more serious and extensive crimes against gays, which in turn has lead to the Leftist LUNCs of further victimization of gays.
Take, for example, when homosexuals are bullied by heterosexuals, it is often blasted all over the airwaves, stirring up enormous public outcry, which then mobilizes societies and government into corrective action . And, to an extent this is as it should be.
Yet, when gays seriously harm or kill each other, it at best registers barely a blimp on the media radar, and in some cases the reports may be buried or whitewashed or spun to fault anyone and/or everyone but the gay perpetrators.
To put this into perspective, in 2011, there were 7,713 hate crimes that were reported to law enforcement. These crimes range from vandalism (29.3%), to intimidation (29%), to simple assault (22%), etc., to 7 deaths.
About 20 percent of those hate crimes were committed against homosexuals--which is about the same rate as hate crimes committed against religions, though less than half the hate crimes due to race. (See HERE).
In short, there were 1,572 hate crimes of various sorts (it is uncertain whether any deaths occurred) based on sexual orientation--mostly against gay men (56%). And, while the rate declined over the previous year, this is still 1,572 crimes too many. (ibid)
However, in that same year, there were nearly 4,000 cases of gay-on-gay violence (almost triple the number of hate crimes against gays), with 19 homicides (which is nearly 3 times the rate for hate crimes as a whole, and 3 times the rate of gay-on-gay homicides for the previous year). (See HERE)
In addition, during 2011, more than 30,000 homosexuals (20 times the hate-crime rate) were infected/victimized with HIV/AIDS by other homosexuals, with more than 7,000 deaths (thousands of times greater than the hate crime rate as a whole), and where both the infection and death rates were on the rise over previous years. (See HERE) And, within that year, thousands of more gays were victimized from other STD's by gays. (See HERE and HERE) (See also HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)
Where is the media publicity and public outcry for these significantly greater social and heath problem? Why dont these more serious and more extensive victimizations get widely reported and championed by liberals, even half as much as hate crimes against gays? What is behind the conspicuous silence of liberals? Could it be that these more serious and extensive victimizations don't advance, but may even hinder, the liberal and gay agenda's? Is it likely that liberal leaders and media elites may have submarined or whitewashed or distracted attention away from these harrowing and unflattering statistics?
I will leave the gentle readers to answer these questions for themselves, while reserving to myself the right to reasonably answer the last two question in the affirmative.
To me, if liberals were truly concerned about the victimization of homosexuals, more so than their own political aspirations and pet agendas, they would advocate as much if not more so against the more prevalent gay-on-gay victimizations.
Keep in mind, though, that while hate crimes against homosexuals have been mostly in decline over the last several years (see HERE), gay-on-gay victimization is on the rise, in some cases significantly (see HERE and HERE and HERE ). Could this rise have been caused by the lack of liberal reporting and attention and intervention? If so, might the liberal neglect, as well as possible obfuscation, be considered a form of leftist victimization of homosexuals?
What makes the agenda-driven liberal neglect all the more damaging, is that it has resulted, ironically, in gays not having equal protection under the law. When gays victimize each other, they don't have some of the same remedies in place as when heterosexuals victimize each other: "Although all 50 U.S.states issue protection from abuse orders (aka restraining orders, stay-away orders, etc.), some do not make this legal remedy available to gay men and lesbians. Domestic violence shelters are typically not available to gay male victims because few shelters admit men. Domestic violence shelter services appear to be increasingly responsive to the needs of lesbian victims. Nonetheless, more work is needed to address heterosexist attitudes and shelters' general focus on IPV [intimate partner violence] as a male-on-female problem. Such issues may discourage lesbian victims from seeking shelter and can contribute to negative experiences for those who do. There are few agencies specifically for lesbians and gay male victims of IPV, and most DV [domestic violence] services do not have programs that address the unique issues of these women and men." (See HERE)
Likewise, as I intimate in my article on The Politics of Race, and as illustrated in my post on the Leftist LUNCs of the Treyvon Martin/George Zimmerman Controversy, liberals have underhandedly exploited the racially-motivated victimization of blacks so as to aggrandize themselves and forward unintentionally destructive political ends, often in ways most harmful to blacks. Their exploitation of racial tension has been what I consider to be the most insidious form of racism: liberals have wrecked substantial psychological and sociological damage by politically locking a whole race of people into perpetual shackles of presumed helplessness, incompetence, and dependency on a predominately white government. I can think of no greater insult to a community that has produced not a few leaders of nations, industry, sports, entertainment, religion, etc.
And, as in the case of homosexuals, liberals have rightly trumpeted racial hate crimes, and worked to diminish them--which is good.
Yet, they seem to have turned a blind eye towards the far more serious rate of black-on-black violence. In 2011, there were 3,645 victims of racially motivated hate crimes, of which 71.9 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-black bias--or, in short, there were 2621 hate crimes against blacks, though it is uncertain how many of the 7 hate crime deaths were against blacks. (See HERE) Whereas, "Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person." (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE) Or, in short, in 2011 there were 6,580 black-on-black homicides, which is nearly a thousand times as many homicides as all hate crime homicides as a whole. "Equally as startling, the same study reveals African Americans were victims of an estimated 805,000 nonfatal violent crimes in just one year alone." (See HERE) If only 50% of those were black-on-black crimes, it would still be more than 100 times as many as hate crimes against blacks for the same year.
Not only is the black-on-black violence significantly higher than hate crimes, but it has been increasing over the years, whereas hate crimes against blacks have been decreasing. (ibid) Is it any wonder that black-on-black violence is increasjng when the attention of the liberal media and politicians is so riveted on the hate crimes, to the near exclusion of black-on-black crimes?
Again, to me, if liberals were truly concerned about the victimization of blacks, more so than their own political aspirations and pet agendas, they would advocate as much if not more so against the more prevalent black-on-black victimization.
Unfortunately, liberals are also busy dysfunctionally pressing Muslims into the victim box, with similar backfire results to homosexuals and blacks. (see HERE)
In each of these cases liberals have not only victimize the American public with the resulting Leftist LUNCs, but even more so they have inadvertently victimized the victims.
I will add other examples when they are written up--such as, PETA's exploitation of animal cruelty, which has resulted in the victimization (at times fatal) of scientist and businesses; or environmentalist who have exploited endangered species to wreck havoc on developing regions; etc.
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