I am a fan of Ellen Degeneres. I consider her to be a beautiful, funny, smart person as well as a fabulous dancer. I would be delighted to have her as a friend.

She is openly gay. I support equal rights for gay people because, you know, rights are rights. And for this to be a truly free nation based on justice, we have to have equal rights for all people– gay and straight, because that’s what equal means.

And I am not just saying that because I like Ellen. I’d say that even if I didn’t think she was awesome. Which I do.

I mean, just because I don’t like someone or agree with how they live their lives doesn’t mean I get to dictate my opinions to them and deny them basic civil liberties.

For example, I do not agree with the way certain members of the group One Million Moms live their lives. They seem like a humorless bunch of bigots and I worry that they are raising their children to be humorless bigots, too, and my daughter and future grandchildren will have to interact with them.

But just because I don’t agree with their lifestyle– and think they should not be allowed to adopt kids because they will indoctrinate them with that lifestyle– doesn’t mean they aren’t entitled to the same rights as everyone else.

Sure, I wish they wouldn’t flaunt their mean-spirited choices in my face by influencing retailers to take a delicious and cleverly named flavor of ice cream off store shelves, but far be it for me to deny them freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment.

But just as they have the right to speak, I have the right to do the opposite of anything they suggest. For example, I now plan to do much more of my shopping at J.C. Penney.

Not that I plan to abandon Macy’s because true love cannot be denied, but JCP, you won my respect today.

A small child enduring surgery on his leg in a parking lot with no anesthesia. No pain medication at all.

His mother was holding him, he was crying. NBC did not have sound, only Ann Curry’s voice narrating the scene. Sound would have been more than we could bear. The cries of a little boy having his ravaged leg stitched back together had to be chilling. Haunting.

But even without sound, you could feel that pain. It was palpable and it slapped me in the face.

My brain can barely wrap itself around this unspeakable tragedy. And my heart can barely handle the Internet right now, with the bickering and griping of moronic, heartless people trying to make this a political issue, trying to capitalize on the death and devastation of helpless people. I just get too angry reading that shit, and honestly, that is a waste of my time and emotion and helps no one.

Most of what I’ve read on Twitter has been helpful: ways to donate, scams to avoid, updates on the relief efforts. I learned that I could donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting HAITI to 90999. I checked the Red Cross’ Web site and this is legitimate. According to the Web site, while your carrier may charge you the standard text message rate, the entire $10 would go to the Red Cross.

I and several thousand other people re-tweeted this. Last I heard this has generated millions of dollars in much-needed donations.

I tried not to pay attention to hateful tweets, especially tweets about Pat Robertson because frankly, I could not care less what that stupid bigot has to say on any topic. But there was one tweet in my stream today that has bothered me since I read it.

It wasn’t from one of the more politically motivated tweeps I follow. Their tweets are often harsh, on both the left and the right.

This was from someone here in my town, who normally tweets pretty boring stuff about her industry. She’s not a friend, but yesterday we carried on a Twitter conversation with about cupcakes. But today, she tweeted this:

“If only people could donate $10 each to their own communities – what a difference it would make locally.”

I read it and re-read it. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt that there was no ill-will intended in that sentence. I fully support local charities and actually promote local non-profits fundraising through my job. I spend an entire month each year working on a campaign that raises money to help families in our community.

My husband and I donate thousands of dollars each year to local charities.

But that tweet, on it’s own with no further explanation, struck me as incredibly selfish and small-minded.  Hopefully she meant that, in addition to helping Haiti, we should see how we can help our neighbors, too. But we live in an American city and with all our local problems, including poverty, WE DO NOT HAVE DEAD BODIES LINED UP IN THE STREETS. Our hospitals aren’t crumbling. Our schools haven’t fallen down and buried our children.

Here in the suburbs, babies are not being stitched back together in parking lots without anesthesia. Whatever problems we think we have, as Americans we will likely never know this kind of suffering.

We are not even strong enough to even listen to their cries.