Left defends marginalized groups

I respond to the Thursday letter “Secular left has own commandments” from Hal Merz. His attitudes about the left reveal more about his own bias than they do about leftist politics. Like many conservative critics, Merz seems to believe that the highest concern of the left is to prevent people from being “offended.” This is a ridiculous and reductive sentiment.

The left is concerned with protecting lives, not sensibilities. Marginalized groups such as women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities don’t oppose rhetoric because it offends them, but because those thoughts and words can, and often do, threaten their physical and mental well-being.

Conservatives love to employ the image of the coddled liberal millennial, but the fact is that most of the people calling for safe spaces are perfectly familiar with the “different ideas” for which Merz is advocating. Many of those ideas have likely been used to oppress them since childhood, and have directly contributed to the disproportionate violence committed against America’s marginalized peoples.

One need only look at the hate crime committed last week in Portland, Ore., fatal stabbings fueled by antiMuslim extremism, to see how rhetoric breeds such violence. Perhaps conservatives should question whether they’re not the ones struggling with different ideas.

Stephen Davies Upper Arlington