The Power of Words

I think sometimes people forget the power that words can have. Or they just don't care. I am going to go with the first choice.


Last week I was watching a stand up comic who I thought was hilarious until he dropped the F-bomb. Not the 4 letter F-bomb, the other one.

Faggot. 

I hate this word. I cringe inside my soul when it is thrown out and used. Commonly it is a generic insult towards everyone from Barney Frank to Al Gore, shoot Ann Coulter uses it likes it is candy. Why must it be used in comedy too? Why does it even need to be used at all?

Later that week I decided to watch a sitcom on HBO, next thing I know the word is there again. I know there are some people who think that you should be able to make fun of anything in comedy, and not need to be PC, but I am not one of those people. I think this word should never be used, it is so utterly offensive, and yet comedians are re-introducing it into our vernacular, thus people watching this may get conditioned and not think it is a big deal.

It is a very big deal. It is a word that has been used as an insult as early as 1914. Here we are almost 100 years later with it still in out vocabulary.

FBI studies have found that LGBT people are more likely to be victims of a violent hate crime than any other minority group in the United States. Additional studies have found that LGBT youth are 4 times more likely to commit suicide. Yet here we are in 2012 acting like we all live in insular caves with no responsibility for what leaves our mouths.

Words have power. Power to hurt, power love, power to heal. Martin Luther King Jr knew that, hopefully most of you reading this do too. But for those that don't let's not sit idly by and let it happen. Speak up and educate, remember we are responsible for each other, and this world we live in.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.- Martin Luther King Jr