Harrison Butker graduation speech

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Many gay people have been ostracized by their own families. Surely you aren't so callous as to say to them, get over it, there's no actual consequence?

I think we have to separate two things here.

There are broad things, the things we discuss when we talk about society and policy and how things work and are structured. Dealing with the common things, rather than micro examples that usually go all over the place. This is mostly what I am talking about, the stances of major institutions like the Catholic Church and the Islam commonly practiced in the world.

Then we have the small things people deal with on an individual level. As I said above, you are always going to have X% of the population that are just jackasses. Does that suck? Yeah, but what can we pragmatically do about that? They always have existed and always will. Micro examples can be found for any outrageous view, but usually are not common and meaningfully relevant to a larger societal context.


I have been primarily speaking of the first here, because that is how you actually manage a society and how a people live. Nobody will deny, there are very tiny obscure groups of Christians who, as I said, really do believe horrible things about gays. The position of the Catholic Church is a very very mild censure of disagreement and stipulating God's love for the sinner anyways.




Your example here is phrased in a difficult way. It belongs to the second category. Do we believe a person has no right to stop associating with another person? I doubt it, a person, blood or not, can stop associating with someone for any reason or no reason. Are they an asshole for doing it for this reason? Of course. If I had a kid and he was gay, I would not give a shit. A father's role is to raise a boy into a good man, that has nothing to do with this. What choice is there though besides, yes, getting over it? You cannot force someone to love you. You cannot force people to associate with who they do not want too. In the real world, we do not get to control other people. Is it a shitty situation? Yes. Would I sympathize for them and feel empathy? Yes. But what, practically, is to be done besides getting over it? I know a lot of people know hate this idea of getting over things, but it is far, far healthier to take life's punches and stand back up rather than too allow in self-pity for the rest of your life. The phrasing here assumes that a healthy mental state is callousness. I don't think it's either or. I can sympathize with people going through a difficult time and enduring a shitty personal situation, and I can also be aware that getting over it is the healthy answer. We have, all of us, surely gone through some shit. Some more than others. But I have never seen a single person improve their lives by refusing to get over the bad things. I could sit here and cry and play victim because X and Y and Z have happened to me in life, but what does that do? How does that help me? Will that make me happy? Fulfilled? Is it healthy? No, to all of them. There is no other real answer.