April 12, 2009

Rethinking YouTube’s 12-Year-Old Anti-Gay

It’s not often I replace a post. In fact, this is, I think, the first time I have. I think it’s important, not to cover my butt over anything, but so that what I wrote earlier doesn’t throw more fuel on the bonfire of anger directed at a kid.

Now… About this video:

Arym got me thinking — instead of reacting

In the vein of my reply to Arym, I think I’ve gotten so accustomed to the LGBT community being attacked from all sides — and not just by adults, but by kids, who have zero life experience (and thus zero authority, which gives me zero tolerance) — I’ve become far more reactionary than I realize.

That’s no excuse, but an explanation. To make the understatement of the decade: It’s been a tough year. In fact, I can’t imagine a year more stress-filled for any gay person than one in which Christmas comes, quite unexpectedly, in May, and then, after working your ass off all summer trying to hang on to your “gift,” a band of hateful liars (and ignorant schmucks) rips it out of your hands. Five months hence, you’re still waiting to find out if the state is going to forcibly divorce you from your wife.

All throughout, the religiofascists clearly telegraph their plan to strip us of domestic partnerships (and then what? housing and employment protections? after all, the court agreed that “The People” can vote away any right it wants now, like it or not), while garden-variety bigots from every walk of life are condemning you to a hell you don’t believe in, making rational discussion absolutely impossible — and your own people, the “nice gays,” are telling you to “reach out” to these hopeless homophobes, when you know what that’s gotten you already…

At the same time, the closer we get to equality (and we are — just not in California), the more hysterical our self-avowed enemies get, the more desperate their tactics become, and the thinner my patience is. Did I say “thinner”? I should say my patience is practically nonexistent.

I’m a little… stressed.

And when you’ve got mere teenagers telling you every week that “Matt Shepard got what he deserved,” well… it gets harder to make the distinction between kids who are just plain rotten to the core, and those who may be, as [redacted] speculates, a victim of [redacted].

In any case, I was wrong to hammer the kid — at least so swiftly, and so harshly. My ire was misdirected — but now it’s aimed squarely where it should have been from the beginning: at the irresponsible (and perhaps abusive) “adult” who would allow (or perhaps coerce) this boy to do such a thing.

Arym … you’re right.

And I need a vacation.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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