In Michele Bachmann’s home district, evangelicals have created an extreme anti-gay climate. After a rash of suicides, the kids are fighting back.
That was the headline of a Rolling Stone article from last month. Sure I’m a bit late on posting anything about it, but it has just come to my attention today. By the time I got half way through it, I was actually in tears. This topic hits home for me in more ways that one. Moreover, it just saddens me altogether that the subject of homosexuality and religion are still such hot topics.
The idea that people feel they have a right to torture another human being for something like the person they love spins me out. How can religious people that say, “Love the sinner hate the sin,” and “Judge not lest ye be judged,” or even, “Love thy neighbor as thy self,” consider themselves such great “christians” when they are condemning (bullying, assaulting, or even MURDERING) people every chance they get? How can a PARENT disown or not protect their CHILD simply because they “don’t agree with ‘that’ lifestyle”?
Here’s a story for you.
My younger brother is still in school. He had a friend, a girl that played on several school teams with him, and had a couple classes with. She was a good kid. She was silly and funny, polite and generous. She was a little different from most of the girls around her; she wasn’t quite as feminine as her female classmates. This girl was your typical 16 year old kid.
One day, her parents found out that she is gay. There was a big uproar (read: ANGER) from her parents and they threatened to go to her school and the parents of the girl they found her to be dating. All of this obviously sent this girl into frenzy of fear and despair. So, what does she do? She hangs herself.
Did her religious parents have to react the way they did? NO! She was their child! They should have just loved her for who she was!
Let’s step outside the whole religious aspect for a minute and turn back to that Rolling Stone article. The children in the article looked to the people of authority in their lives to protect them. The ENTIRE school system failed them. The ENTIRE COMMUNITY failed these kids. What’s the purpose of an anit-bullying policy if you let the bullying happen anyway? There isn’t one. How can politicians like Michele Bachman and even that school district create policies that basically create a bodged up set of rules that render everyone helpless to do anything?
Look at ‘Don’t ask, Don’t Tell’. It was a law that was passed to placate those that did not want gays and lesbians in the services yet still “allow” gay people to serve. However, if you couldn’t tell anyone you were gay and you couldn’t do ‘anything’ gay, what exactly made you homosexual? In that article the school administrators tried to ignore the sexuality of the taunts made toward these kids, and the bullying, yet didn’t follow the very rules they set up AGAINST bullying.
Parents need to love their children no matter who or what they are. Kids should feel safe in school. This should be a generation that is going forward with tolerance and acceptance of differences rather than hatred and violence.
To read the Rolling Stone article, go here.. One Town’s War on Gay Teens
Cognitive Discord 