Black Box Report

On Sunday I saw the Tennessee church shooting story, and I suspect, like many of you, shook my head at yet another senseless shooting. Today, however, I learned what precipitated the hail of gunfire and that this was not a random act of madness but a calculated hate crime on a targeted population.

Most of us like to take pride in how far we’ve come in America. From our ugly, not too distant past, real progress has been made when it comes to racial and gender equality. You'd have to be an idiot to think we've leveled the playing field or scrubbed from our history the stain of slavery, but few will deny, slowly but surely we're getting there.

I wish I could say the same thing about homophobia. Being a bigot is no longer tolerated, but in too many places mocking gays still gets a laugh, and in some places the laughter is replaced with pure hate. Please don't kid yourself, that this was one sick wacko in Tennessee. Consider just this year the uncensored bile from elected officials and so called “men of god” when debating same sex marriage or repealing "don't ask, don't tell." It wasn't that, with every fiber of their being, they didn't and don't believe gays are equals; many of them believe it's okay to marginalize the population without any fear of being branded a bigot. Too often they're proven right. Gays are blamed for terror attacks, hurricanes, floods, droughts - I’m surprised the recession hasn't been pinned on them. And while we laugh at the nutjobs who point the fingers - we laugh.

We didn't laugh after Matthew Shepherd was murdered in Laramie and were not laughing after this tragedy in Tennessee. But lets not kid ourselves that because "Will and Grace" was popular or that most guys weren’t threatened by the "Fab Five", we've turned a corner on tolerance.

Too many people still think it's okay to hate.