If there’s so much real hate out there, why make it up?

The most recent in a long line of hate crime/anti-gay hoaxes was uncovered recently.  Granted it was done by a couple DJs attempting to “create a discussion”.  But there is a trend afoot where certain members of particular minority groups are staging incidents of anti-gay hate perpetrated by, of course, Christians.

Remember, the Montana man who busted up his face trying to do a back-flip and blamed his idiocy injuries on gay bashing?

Then there was the racist, anti-semetic, anti-gay vandalism at Oberlin College; except it too was all in good fun.

And who could forget the lesbian waitress who attempted to besmirch customers by claiming that they didn’t leave a tip because they didn’t agree with her “lifestyle”.  Well, it turns out she made it up.

But nothing… nothing trumps Floyd Elliot.  He told police two men carved the word “fag” into his forehead.  He later admitted he made it up when it was pointed out that it was carved backwards…’cause he did it using a mirror.

The truth is, incident, after incident, after incident, after incident, after incident, is turning out to be complete fabrication.  And why?  Because there are people, professional activists like Dan Savage, who earn their living ensuring the groups they claim to represent feel like victims.  When people are told by their particular cause’s activists that they are victims; that they should expect to be victims; and that you need to be constantly looking over your shoulder, you will always read into every slight a personal attack.  Perhaps these people have not been victims yet and felt they were not meeting the expectations of the proper activists.  And when they have yet to become a victim, they feel like they need to concoct an incident because the end (“awareness”) justifies the means (creating an incident to shape the narrative).

It seems to me that they have yet to consider the distinct possibility that they aren’t as hated as their activist leaders would like to believe.  Perhaps disagreement is not the same as hate.  Perhaps they ought to ask themselves, if there is so much hate out there, why do they have to make it all up?

According to a UCLA study by The Williams Institute released in April 2011, an estimated 3.5% of Americans identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual which equates to approximately 9 million LGBT adults.  The FBI reports there were 1376 victims of hate crime due to sexual identity in 2012.  This translates to 1.5:10,000ths of 1% (.00015%) of all LGBT people were victims of hate crimes.

Sure, hate crime happens and every instance is a tragedy.  But it is not an epidemic and shouldn’t be marketed as such.  Hoaxes like this trivialize the true victims.  When problems like hate crime is over hyped, your cause and those associated with it are seen as exaggerators, and credibility is lost making your plight easily dismissed.  Let’s be honest, when you have the number of victims of the “target” population down to .00015%, I’d say you have the problem as under control as humanly possible.