June 16, 2025
By Alexis Tarkalson
This word, bigot, gets slung around a lot, generally after a heated debate wherein one side feels they are losing ground. It is a last resort to shut down the opposition–an ill-conceived notion that once the insult is launched, the accuser has automatically won. And most commonly, it is flung in the face of those who disagree with same-sex marriage and/or transgender ideology.
Such a move is strategic but all-in-all, cheap. The strategic purposes can be boiled down to the following: to undermine policy legitimacy, to cast shame, to discredit, and to get out of a conversation no longer beneficial for your reputation.
How Obergefell changed the conversation
We can trace such default behavior back to the supreme court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges when Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court and wrote, “The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.”
Justice Roberts was outraged in his dissent and responded, “It is one thing for the majority to conclude that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage; it is something else to portray everyone who does not share the majority’s “better informed understanding” as bigoted.”
He details the many ways in which the majority of the court wanted to leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that those who only accept marriage to be what it has been for “our entire existence” were “disparaging”, “disrespecting”, and “inflicting dignitary wounds” on the LGBT community. These words sent a message to the public: if you are anti-my chosen lifestyle, you are anti-me.
Politicians, celebrities, and the bigot default
Back in 2012, the UK’s deputy prime minister called those who disgreed with same-sex marriage ‘bigots’. Two years later, British politician James Brown called a voter a bigot and then apologized (you don’t see that anymore).
Now, politicians and supporters alike utilize the derogatory term as a soundbite weapon in debates when things were looking intellectually indefensible. Senator Elizabeth Warren stated in 2018, “Religious liberty should not be used to shield bigotry.” Bernie Sanders called Trump, “a racist, a sexist, a bigot and a homophobe,” back in 2019. CNN host Don Lemon also jumped on the bandwagon to call Trump a bigot in 2020. Tom Felton, actor in the famous Harry Potter franchise, is facing backlash this year for refusing to call its creator, J.K. Rowling, a bigot. Rowling is notorious for her stance against transgender ideology in women’s spaces and is repeatedly called a bigot on X.
But just because you call me something doesn’t make it so.
Am I really a bigot? Let’s define It.
Cambridge dictionary asserts the following definition for the word, “a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who does not like other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life.”
Many–and I would argue most–of the crowd who are routinely called bigots bear no malice towards the LGBT individual. In fact, we couldn’t care less about their chosen lifestyle. The only time we choose to step in is when children are in harm’s way, adhering to basic biology is touted as “bigotry”, and our religious freedoms are threatened. But nowadays, that is the criteria for being labeled a bigot: religious, scientifically grounded, and pro-children’s safety.
The truth is, you can disagree with a chosen lifestyle and advocate against the way that lifestyle might affect your life, and still like that person. You can allow for differing viewpoints and opinions without agreeing with them.
So, who would I label a bigot? Someone who dislikes another person for their chosen lifestyle. I dislike lifestyle choices, not human beings. There is a difference. Even if you want to say you are your lifestyle–which I highly advise against– I still distinguish a person’s inherent worth from their actions.
A dangerous future: From labels to legal consequences
But for how long will being labeled a “bigot” remain merely as a perceived “mic drop”? In Brazil, comedian Leo Lins was just sentenced to eight years in prison for his ‘bigoted’ jokes. This is a case where the prosecutors were requesting a prohibition on Lins from delivering any jokes that contained, “content that is derogatory or humiliating based on race, color, ethnicity, religion, culture, origin, national or regional background, sexual orientation or gender, disability or elderly status, children, adolescents, women, or any category considered a minority or vulnerable group”
Justice Alito, in his dissent for the Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015, predicted, “I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” We are seeing this happen in real time.
So, to answer the question: am I a bigot? Chances are, you aren’t. But that doesn’t matter, because once you have been labeled, there is no escaping the implications.
