Dealing with hate

[name], I forgive you for your thoroughly unchristian comments and pity you for the abuse that you have suffered to have had such a hurtful and hateful attitude ingrained into your very being.

I will pray for you, that you might come to know the love and compassion of Jesus Christ our saviour.

It's not the sort of thing that most people would usually expect from me, but it's what I wrote in a forum on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, I woke up early and was considering getting dressed en femme and going out shopping. While still lying in bed, I turned on my internet tablet, had a quick look at facebook, then opened blogger. There was a comment awaiting moderation, so I opened and read it.

The comment was posted anonymously in response to my post Out and about with my son, and basically said "Why don't you stop doing that and just be a normal man" (the answer is, of course, that that just isn't who I am. It would be on par with telling a female executive that she should be uneducated, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen), indicated that in the poster's opinion, crossdressing equals homosexual (a change from the assumption that all crossdressers are transsexuals, I suppose, but just as wrong), and that they considered me to be a bad parent because my son is exposed to my crossdressing (a loving parent, in a stable marriage, who works to provide for that family is a bad parent? Compared to what?). In my not-entirely-awake state, I thought churchianity idiot (or similar) and deleted the comment. In hindsight, I wish that I'd kept the comment so that I could have published it, to show just how misguided the author is.

I then went on to have a look at the forums on a web site that I frequent. I was shocked to find a post in there, in a thread about blogs, that was written in a style very similar to the blog comment, saying similar things. In part, the poster said that I was "sick and should be stopped." Except that this time, it wasn't anonymous because the site doesn't allow anonymous posting. I didn't immediately know how to react.

Sadly, combined with my usual lack of sleep, this rudeness threw me off balance enough that I abandoned my plan to dress and go out.

By the time I went back to the forum to post a response, a few other forum members had responded, variously defending me and/or criticising the other poster. I asked myself the question "what would Christ do?", then posted the above comment.

I believe that the best response to bigotry and hatred is forgiveness and pity. Preferably delivered with a smile. It's not worth dragging yourself down to their level, and if nothing else, it'll confuse the hell out of them. :)