can someone explain this to me?

[hatam_soferet]

What I don't get, right now, is why we're all being super-sad about the kids who bowed to homophobic bullying and killed themselves, but super-judgemental about the paper who bowed to homophobic bullying and apologised for announcing a gay wedding. I must have seen a dozen posts in the last hour badmouthing that paper.

If they got bullied into doing what they did...why are we blaming them? Aren't they also victims of bullying? Okay, if they actually changed their minds and decided that Teh Gheyz are Ebil, that's one thing. We can be judgemental about that. But why aren't we first asking them just what these mysterious rabbis threatened? Telling them that it doesn't matter what the rabbis said, we'll support them? Pushing to know who these rabbis are?

Why are we blaming the victim?

Can we stop it, please?

Comments

[liv]

I think you're partly right; the paper is in some way the victim of bullying here. However, I expect a professional company to be better able to stand up to bullying than a teenager; it's not a direct analogy. I do think we should be going after the rabbis who put pressure on the paper to do something despicable, those awful people are definitely more to blame. Also from the point of view of the kahal we really don't want religious leaders who go about banning papers from reporting weddings! But the paper still did something despicable, and they're not entirely in a position where they can be excused by saying "but They told me to!"

I was also angry with the paper that apologized for publishing an article about Muslims celebrating Eid without mentioning that some Muslims are scary America-hating evil terrorists. The orgs who put pressure on them to issue that apology are more to blame, but I still think the paper was in the wrong as much as being a victim of "bullying".