A couple days ago Republican Candidate, Susanne Atanus, told the press this disturbing line: "God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on earth as punishment for gay rights and legalized abortions.”
I find it incredible that someone would genuinely believe something like that. To me personally, I find that to be an awful logic about why so many people suffer today. People like this find something considered "bad" and group every thing that is also "bad" with it. Some people don't believe in gay marriage and thats their opinion and I understand that. But when they decided to say that because of gay marriage we have disease and devastating weather, that is to much. These people try and simplify the problems by grouping everything "bad" into one problem.
During the 80's when AIDS broke out, it was condemned as "the gay plague". Because the first man recorded with HIV/AIDS was gay, the gay people of America became the most hated minority. The epidemic was largely ignored by the government and gays were labeled as "high risk". Gay people were grouped with AIDS and they were scrutinized by america.
People still group things today. People work to identify problems and fix them. Thats human nature, and if they can identify multiple problems and fix it with one solution, its even better. But some problems are controversial and people try and group these controversial problems with clear and obvious problems to make the controversial problems seem like an obvious problem. While the example of Atanus relating devastating weather issues to gay marriage is quite blatant, I believe people do it more often than one might think. Do you know of any groupings that are deemed 'bad'?
Nice post! I agree with you that people will often stereotype certain groups with certain characteristics such as AIDS being a disease that only affects gays. I can think of many times when groups are stereotyped and grouped based on prejudicial assumptions. One I'm sure we are all familiar with is New Trier students being rich. Though the New Trier district is in a higher-income area, it does not mean that everyone is wealthy or that everyone has a perfect life here on the North Shore, not at all. I think it is sad that people like Atanus are so ignorant to spread such lies.
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