At Equality Forum this year, the regular bigot protesters showed up, spewing their usual batch of hatred under the guise of Christianity. I was taking their photograph as the main preacher went on about what abominations and perverts gays and lesbians were. “Why else do you think the suicide rate is so high among homosexual teens?” he asked. Well, next thing you know I hear this voice coming out of my mouth. “BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU!” It was actually pretty amazing; I never lose my temper. I get angry, but I don’t lose control like that. It was literally like I was watching myself yell back but without any control over my own words. He really hit a nerve with the suicide comment. “No, it’s not because of people like us,” he said, much more calmly than I had spoken to him. “OF COURSE IT’S BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU! You stand here and call us perverts and abominations! What the fuck do you think is going to happen to impressionable young people who hear that sort of crap from their parents and friends and ministers?!” Ok, I said “fuck,” and I do regret it. Not a good idea when you’re trying to make a point, but I was completely out of control. “No, it’s not because of people like us…” he went on to tell me not to swear, insult my masculinity, and then went on with some other stuff that i stopped paying attention to.
“Not because of people like us.” Uh huh… A man was recently arrested for murdering his three year old son. Apparently he thought the boy might be gay and started beating the crap ouf of him in order to teach him to box. The boy’s mother said that the father “would make the boy fight with him, slapping the child in the head until he cried or wet himself. She said that on one occasion Paris slammed the child against a wall because he was vomiting.” THREE YEARS OLD!
The fact that this happened in the state of Florida should surprise no one.
Where do you think this man learned the values that told him he should beat the crap out of his 3-year old son because he thought he was gay? That gay people are so worthless and such abominations that slamming a tiny boy against a wall and sending him to the hospital is preferable to letting him grow up to be gay, even if you COULD tell he was gay at the age of THREE? He learned it from listening to his parents, his neighbors, the minister in his church.
So, to the so-called “Christians” who protested at Equality Forum this year, and especially to the preacher I yelled at, I just wanted to say again, in print and on the record: THIS IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
Ironically, I was just laughing two weeks ago at this story in the Onion, “New Dad Thinks Baby Might Be Gay” It’s not so funny anymore.
I have long been a person who thought that the best way dealing with the wingnut wacko protesters at gay pride events is to ignore them. That if you pretend they aren't there, then they'll just go away. But it's not true. They don't go away. They breed and multiply and grow like a virus or a malignant tumor, slowly taking over more and more of society until finally a man kills his three year old son out of pure homo-hatred. We cannot ignore these people. We must take them on. I am not suggesting violence, no matter how much violence they commit against us. But we must engage them. We need to bar them from our events (physically if necessary) when we can, we need to engage them in conversation and make them see the error of their ways if possible, and we need to out-shout them and shield them from public view if they won't engage us back. We need to fight them in the courts. We need to fight them in PTA meetings and in college classrooms. We need to stand up in the middle of a hate-filled sermon at church and tell the minister and congregation that sort of thing is WRONG. We need to fight the GOP's anti-gay platform both from without and from the inside. We need to hold Democrats to the standards and values that, as liberals, they claim to have. We need to draw attention to tragedies like the 3 year-old in Florida.
If you are doing these things, great. If you're not doing them, start. The best, most powerful thing you can do is to come out of the closet if you're in it. I think I've changed more minds simply by being an out, visible gay person than anything else I've done. I changed the way my parents vote by telling them I'm gay. I remember my mother saying to my father after Pat Buchanan's infamous speech of vitriol at the 1992 Republican National Convention, "I don't see how we can possibly vote Republican. I just don't think it's an option." Is it easy? No. And it requires some sacrifice, but anything that's worth doing, does.
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