Thread by @JuliusGoat

Behold, a failure to grasp the difference between oppression and opposition.

https://twitter.com/fdrlst/status/1072514595086954496

The photo they use to underscore their point is Ben Shapiro, wealthy and famous, presenting at an annual conservative convention attended by 1000s of conservatives cheering conservative stars, many of whom run the government and push gay-hating policy.

Wow. Just like Stonewall.

“Where is OUR voice?” asks the group catered to by the ruling political party of a country, catered to by their own national propaganda channel, catered to by the president, catered to by the Senate, by gerrymandered supermajorities, by the dominant economic assumptions.

Facts people who represent unjust power need daily reminders of:

Opposition isn’t oppression
Protest isn’t censorship
Rejection isn’t silencing
Criticism isn’t close-mindedness
Consequence isn’t injustice
Our approval isn’t your property

Facts oppressive people need daily reminders of:

*No matter how much you steal, your loot will never include our regard or admiration

*We don’t care what you think of us or of what we do

*The fact you care what we think of you is how we know that you know you’re in the wrong

Facts oppressive people need daily reminders of:

*Our favorite stories are never about people like you

*Our favorite stories are about heroes who fight people like you

*When people oppressed by a villain fight back, audiences cheer

*The cheers don’t make the villain a victim

Conservatives want to legally erase gays—among many others—to maintain their unfair cultural and economic domination.

To achieve this, they have ignored fact and science and basic humanity in ways that endanger all life on the planet.

Opposing them is a necessary moral act.

You know what opposing them doesn’t include?

I’ll tell you.

Nobody will make laws nullifying conservative marriage.

No hospital will separate a conservative from their lifetime companion because their family doesn’t like conservatism.

Nobody will pass laws preventing conservatives from taking custody of adoptive children, or keeping custody of their biological children.

There will be no laws that allow a workplace to fire someone for being conservative.

There will be no laws premised on the idea of the conservatives cannot be trusted around children, or that conservatives are presumed to be pedophiles.

There will be no church-funded initiatives that make their millions by sending conservative children by the thousand to suicide-inducing reeducation camps.

If someone considers the idea of two conservatives having sex to be an abomination according to their personal tastes or religious beliefs, their attempts to draft corporate policy on the basis of that aversion will not be protected on grounds of freedom of religion.

No one will suggest entering a public bathroom with a gun to keep their children safe from conservatives.

No one will murder conservative children and leave them tied to a stake in a cornfield.

No one will gleefully ignore a disease that kills conservatives disproportionately.

This is why conservatives will never be the new version of any oppressed group: they define the scope of their oppression specifically where they are opposed, that is: their ability and their desire to oppress.

But oppression is never oppressed. It’s only opposed.

Conservatives should realize that this opposition, far from being a rejection of their basic humanity, is a great invitation to reclaim their humanity.

We are trying to build a society that views all humans as unique and irreplaceable works of art.

Join anytime.