Seriously. What the actual fuck are we doing?

We are watching human beings be degraded, dehumanized, threatened, and stripped of their dignity, and somehow the conversation keeps coming back to defending the people responsible.

AND SOME OF YOU ARE CHEERING.

I am absolutely horrified by what I am witnessing.

The contempt. The dehumanization. The casual dismissal of suffering. The breathtaking arrogance of people who believe their religion, morality, traditions, or political loyalties give them the right to dictate how other human beings should live.

Women being told their bodies are not entirely their own.

LGBTQ+ people being treated as though their very existence is a threat.

Immigrants being spoken about as though they are less than human.

Racial and religious minorities being subjected to suspicion, hostility, and discrimination.

Survivors of abuse being questioned, humiliated, and blamed while powerful people are defended.

AND WHAT IS THE RESPONSE?

Not universal outrage.

Not an overwhelming demand for accountability.

But laughter. Excuses. Justifications. Applause.

People bending themselves into knots to defend behavior they would condemn in a heartbeat if it came from someone they opposed.

THAT IS WHAT I CANNOT GET PAST.

Not simply the cruelty.

The willingness to justify it.

To normalize it.

To celebrate it.

WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED TO OUR HUMANITY?

This Is Not New. That’s Part of What Makes It So Horrifying.

Let’s stop pretending that misogyny, racism, religious persecution, homophobia, and the abuse of power are new developments.

They are not.

For centuries, human beings have found ways to declare other human beings inferior.

We have used race.

Gender.

Sexuality.

Religion.

Nationality.

Social status.

We have created hierarchies of human worth and then built entire systems to preserve them.

Laws have reinforced those hierarchies.

Religious teachings have been used to justify them.

Institutions have protected them.

And countless human beings have suffered because of them.

Generations have fought, organized, protested, sacrificed, and died trying to secure freedoms and protections that should never have been denied to them in the first place.

And yet here we are.

Still debating whose bodies deserve autonomy.

Whose relationships deserve recognition.

Whose suffering deserves compassion.

Whose lives deserve protection.

THIS IS NOT NEW.

What horrifies me is how deafening the contempt has become.

How openly people can advocate for restricting someone else’s freedom.

How casually the suffering of marginalized people can be dismissed.

How quickly humiliation becomes entertainment.

How easily cruelty can be repackaged as strength, righteousness, or common sense.

And how enthusiastically people applaud.

We didn’t invent cruelty.

We’ve given it a microphone, an audience, and an algorithm.

A Human Being Is Not Property. And Human Dignity Is Not Negotiable.

I have spent a great deal of time recently listening to arguments about marriage, divorce, submission, bodily autonomy, and the supposed authority of some people over others.

And I am appalled by how easily actual human beings disappear from these conversations.

We hear about traditional values.

Biblical authority.

The sanctity of marriage.

Protecting society.

Preserving culture.

But I want to ask something.

WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES?

What about the woman trapped in an abusive marriage?

What about the LGBTQ+ teenager who is taught that something is fundamentally wrong with who they are?

What about the immigrant family living in fear of being separated?

What about the person whose race, religion, or identity makes them a target for hostility?

What about the survivor of sexual violence who watches their suffering become public entertainment?

Where is their humanity in these conversations?

Where is their safety?

Their freedom?

Their dignity?

You can hold deeply personal religious convictions.

You can value tradition.

You can believe in lifelong marriage.

You can make choices for your own life based on your own conscience.

BUT YOUR CONVICTIONS DO NOT GIVE YOU OWNERSHIP OF ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.

A woman is not her husband’s property.

A child is not a religious institution’s property.

Another person’s body is not yours to control.

Another person’s dignity is not yours to revoke.

And another person’s humanity does not depend on whether you approve of their existence.

You do not get to rename domination as love, discrimination as morality, or cruelty as righteousness and expect everyone to applaud.

And Then There Is Religion. Oh, Religion.

This is where it becomes deeply personal for me.

I spent decades immersed in Christianity.

I believed deeply. I served in ministry. I devoted much of my life to helping people.

And I know what it means to be taught that a religious system is unquestionably good, even when something within that system seems deeply wrong.

I was seven years old when I began recognizing contradictions I couldn’t reconcile.

How could something cruel be called good?

How could a loving God command or permit things that seemed so unloving?

How could suffering be justified simply because someone claimed divine authority?

But I was taught that the system was right.

So I assumed the problem must be me.

I questioned my understanding.

My motives.

My goodness.

For decades, I tried to reconcile what I had been told was moral with what I experienced as harmful.

And I eventually came to understand something that changed my life:

WE OFTEN PROTECT BELIEFS BEFORE WE PROTECT PEOPLE.

We defend the doctrine.

We defend the leader.

We defend the institution.

We defend the interpretation.

And somewhere along the way, the person being harmed becomes an inconvenience.

Sometimes they become the enemy.

The woman who questions authority is rebellious.

The LGBTQ+ person who refuses to hide is accused of destroying morality.

The person who reports abuse is accused of attacking the institution.

The person who questions the doctrine is labeled dangerous.

And the people demanding accountability are treated as a greater threat than the harm itself.

DO YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?

We can become so committed to defending what we believe is good that we stop examining whether it is actually producing harm.

And then we have the audacity to call that righteousness.

I know what it feels like to believe that questioning authority is itself a moral failure.

I also know what it costs to finally question it.

And I refuse to accept that attaching God’s name to something automatically makes it good.

If your theology requires someone else’s humiliation, submission, or suffering, then your theology deserves to be questioned.

A belief does not become moral simply because it is sacred to you.

What Are You Willing to Excuse?

This is the question I want every one of us to wrestle with.

Because I am increasingly disturbed by how easily our moral standards can change depending on who is doing the harm.

We recognize cruelty when it comes from someone we dislike.

We condemn abuse when the accused person belongs to a group we oppose.

We demand accountability when it is politically convenient.

But what happens when the person behaving cruelly is someone we admire?

Someone who shares our religion?

Our politics?

Our values?

Our identity?

Do we hold them to the same standard?

Or do we suddenly become experts at explaining away the harm?

Do we minimize it?

Deflect?

Attack the person who spoke up?

Insist that the offender’s good qualities somehow erase the consequences of their behavior?

HOW MUCH HUMAN SUFFERING ARE WE WILLING TO EXCUSE TO AVOID ADMITTING THAT SOMEONE WE SUPPORT IS WRONG?

I am not suggesting that every accusation is true or that disagreement itself is cruelty.

Evidence matters. Fairness matters. Context matters.

But none of those principles requires us to abandon compassion or celebrate another person’s humiliation.

If you believe abuse is wrong, it should be wrong regardless of who commits it.

If you believe freedom matters, it should matter for people whose choices you would never make yourself.

If you believe human dignity is sacred, it cannot be reserved for people who look, love, worship, or live like you.

IF YOUR MORALITY ONLY APPLIES TO PEOPLE YOU APPROVE OF, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT WORTH?

The Applause Is What Terrifies Me.

There is something profoundly disturbing about watching human suffering become a spectator sport.

The jokes.

The mockery.

The celebration of someone’s humiliation.

The enthusiastic defense of statements that reduce entire groups of people to stereotypes, threats, or objects of contempt.

And the people who seem more offended by someone speaking out against cruelty than by the cruelty itself.

Think about that.

A person speaks about being harmed, and the outrage is directed at their anger.

Someone questions an institution, and the concern becomes the institution’s reputation.

A marginalized person asks to be treated with dignity, and the conversation shifts to why their existence makes other people uncomfortable.

HOW HAVE WE BECOME SO SKILLED AT MAKING THE PERSON WHO IS HURTING INTO THE PROBLEM?

And why are we applauding?

Why is humiliation funny?

Why is domination admirable?

Why is compassion treated as weakness?

Why does defending someone’s humanity so often require defending their right to exist, to leave, to love, or simply to live without fear?

I understand disagreement.

I understand that people have different convictions.

But disagreement does not require dehumanization.

And conviction does not excuse cruelty.

We should be deeply concerned when causing suffering becomes something people celebrate rather than something they feel compelled to prevent.

I Know How Hard It Is to Question What You Have Been Taught.

I am not writing this from a place of believing I have always gotten everything right.

Far from it.

I spent decades inside a system I eventually came to question.

I know how deeply beliefs can become intertwined with identity, belonging, community, and the fear of losing everything familiar.

I know how frightening it can be to consider that something you’ve devoted your life to might not be what you thought it was.

And I know how tempting it is to defend the system rather than confront the contradictions.

But I also know what happens when we refuse to question.

People get hurt.

Their experiences are dismissed.

Their voices are silenced.

And sometimes the people causing the harm are protected precisely because they represent something we have been taught to revere.

That is why I keep returning to one question:

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PROTECTING OUR BELIEFS BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROTECTING HUMAN BEINGS?

I have lived that question.

I have wrestled with it.

And I am no longer willing to look away from it.

I Am Not Asking You to Agree With Me About Everything.

I am asking you to examine what you are willing to excuse.

When someone you admire degrades women, does it disturb you?

When a religious leader justifies keeping someone in an abusive marriage, do you question it?

When an LGBTQ+ person is treated as less deserving of dignity, do you recognize the harm?

When immigrants are spoken about as though their humanity is irrelevant, does it concern you?

When allegations of abuse are met with public humiliation, do you demand fairness and compassion?

When someone on your own side behaves in a way you would condemn in an opponent, do you have the courage to say so?

Or do you immediately begin searching for a reason to defend them?

AT WHAT POINT DOES YOUR LOYALTY BECOME MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR CONSCIENCE?

And if your principles disappear the moment they become inconvenient, were they ever really your principles?

I Refuse to Call This Normal.

I refuse to become comfortable with the degradation of women or marginalized people.

I refuse to accept that religious language automatically makes something moral.

I refuse to believe that protecting power, authority, or tradition is more important than protecting human beings.

And I refuse to pretend that the public celebration of cruelty is harmless.

I am angry.

But underneath that anger is grief.

Grief for the generations of people who have fought to be recognized as fully human.

Grief for those who have suffered while institutions protected themselves.

Grief for people who have been taught that their identity, their questions, or their very existence makes them defective.

And grief that, with everything humanity has witnessed and everything we should have learned, we are still finding ways to justify treating one another as less than human.

I was seven years old when I began questioning things that seemed cruel.

I spent decades believing those questions made me wrong.

I WAS NOT WRONG TO QUESTION CRUELTY THEN.

AND I AM NOT WRONG TO QUESTION IT NOW.

So I will leave you with this.

What are you willing to overlook because it comes from someone you trust?

What are you willing to justify because it supports something you believe?

Whose suffering are you willing to minimize to preserve your sense of being right?

And what would it take for you to say:

Even if this comes from my own side, I cannot defend it.

Because if protecting our beliefs requires us to abandon our humanity, then our beliefs are what need to be questioned.

The cruelty is horrifying.

But the applause?

The applause should shake us to our core.

— Kami Flack