I have earned my disillusionment.

So, I'd say that a fair share of you have already seen the following meme, right?

We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.

How many of you read that and went 'BWUAH'? Because seriously, what's the point of that meme? Who is this unnamed we? The FBI? The HRC? Aliens monitoring us from space somewhere?

Also, secondly, who believes in gay rights? Gay Rights isn't a religion. It's not the Tooth Fairy, it's not Santa Claus.

So why make a meme that basically says, "If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!"?

Honestly, it's like that really stupid statistic that says 98% of teens have tried pot and to repost that in your journal if you're part of the two percent that haven't. For one thing, just thinking about that one for a little would make it pretty clear that's not true and a little basic research would disprove it.

And yet I keep seeing that in people's signatures.

ARGH. Way to give teens an undeserved bad name, everyone.

I wasn't sure if I was just being too critical about the Gay Rights meme, then thankfully ceresi also posted about it, as well as linking to other people that had pointed out the flaws in the Gay Rights meme like the self-righteousness, the us versus them mentality, and the coerciveness.

Personally, I believe in human rights, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or anything else used to divide humans into groups. I believe in taking useful action, and I believe that just posting a meme won't change anything.

I also believe that this is currently the most worrying topic in the political hot zone.

I mean, the right to obtain evidence through torture? Not showing them the evidence against them? No limits on how long people can be held? That's more important to me than some mythical person who's supposedly going through all of el-jay and seeing who's reposting a paragraph and who isn't.

And if you really want to support a cause specific to one group, try supporting the Equal Rights Amendment. Trust me, sending off an e-mail to Congress or your Senators is a lot more productive than just reposting something in your livejournal -- for one thing, people with actual power are more likely to see the former, since I rather doubt that most political figures go around surfing el-jay on their breaks.

Edit: You want to do something real for Gay Rights? Here. A nice little collection of links to work with. Enjoy.