Brian Moylan at Gawker brought the goods today. Oh my god, he brought the goods. Reacting to the recent spate of gay teen suicides, Brian decided to use his platform at one of the most widely read blogs on the internet to explain some things, in a piece called What’s It Like to Be A Gay Teen. Here are a few snippets, but please, read the whole thing and share it wherever you think it needs to be shared:
Yes, high school—and often college—sucks for everyone. That’s because teens are total assholes. They’re just like normal people, but amped up on a combination of hormones and self-doubt that makes them particularly awful. And mean! Teens are cruel, especially to other teens and especially to other teens who are perceived as different.
Imagine your worst high school memory and multiply it by ten and that is how bad it is for many gay teenagers every day. The ones that have it the worst are those that are bullied repeatedly by their peers until they become suicidal, drop out of school, or are robbed of their education because they can’t focus on learning the Pythagorean theorem or the amendments to the Constitution because they’re thinking about how they’re going to physically survive the day. In many cases, parents, teachers, principals and other grown-ups don’t care about about the gay student’s problems and condone the bullying behavior, either explicitly or with their own inaction.
[...]
That’s the saddest part about Tyler Clementi’s story. I don’t know if he was out to his parents or if he was out in high school or how he was treated before landing at Rutgers, but I know from personal experience that graduating high school and going to college is the one thing many gay teens have to look forward to. Many are just waiting for their parents to drive away with an empty minivan, so that they can go into the dorm and come out for the first time in their lives. They imagine college as this magical place where everyone will love and accept them and they might even have the chance to meet people like them, or go on a date with a cute boy (or girl) and do all the silly, mundane things that college kids do the world over.
[...]
I wish I could go back and tell Tyler that things would get better and make him believe it. I really wish I was there for him—for all these kids—in those moments before they made their final decision. To tell them that it’s not their fault and that we would make it through this together. I wish I was there to tell their attackers to stop because they are literally committing murder. I wish I could bring each of them back, as silly as it sounds, because we failed them. We all failed them by pretending like it’s easier to be a gay teen now, that there still aren’t people in the world that are happy that gay teens are killing themselves.
No, really, go read it all. It’s stunning. Thanks, Brian, for being awesome.
Stephenson Billings at Christwire has created a set of pictures based on 1950′s pulp novels, meant to visually depict the various ways liberals in the year 2010 are taking us further and further down into a hellish gutter of gluttony and utter sexiness.
They. Are. Wonderful.
I think the LGBT bloggity reading community will appreciate this one particularly:
Yesterday I wrote about the creepy, creepy story of Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell, who has embarked on what amounts to a disturbing stalking campaign against Ryan Armstrong, student body president at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He claims it’s about Armstrong’s “radical homosexual agenda,” but really, it looks more like a creepy psychosexual obsession to everybody else. If you haven’t watched Shirvell’s interview on Anderson Cooper 360, click the above clicky.
Well, now Mike Cox, Shirvell’s boss, has also gone to talk to Anderson Cooper, and basically defends his employee the entire way through:
SO WEIRD.
Gabe at Videogum has the best reaction I’ve seen to this whole scenario, where a state prosecutor, in his off hours, is very publicly stalking a young college student:
[H]ow come the rest of us are nervous about our bosses CATCHING US PLAYING MINESWEEPER, and you’re willing to go on national television and make up a bunch of bullshit about why you’re not going to take any kind of action whatsoever (at least not publicly, and certainly if there was ever a reason for public action, it is probably a well-publicized and unapologetic hate crime committed by a state employee who needs medicine) against someone working in your office whose ostensible function is the day to day protection of laws and people’s rights. Perfect. “Oh, he’s a bully. But what can I say? HE IS MY HUSBAND.” Unacceptable!
That is EXACTLY what this is like. “I’m so sorry my husband is stalking this young boy, but he is my husband and I will stand by him!”
Jeremy just posted this picture of Tyler Clementi playing in the band for a musical production at the Porch Light Theatre in Glen Rock, New Jersey, earlier this year:
Rapper’s Comments Follow Atrocious Day of Gay Suicides, Says TWO
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out called on rapper 50 Cent to clarify potentially anti-gay remarks he made on his Twitter account today. The tweet comes on the heels an infamous day of sadness and sorrow, where four gay teens died from suicide. According to 50 Cent’s message:
“If you a man and your over 25 and you don’t eat pu**y just kill your self damn it. The world will be a better place.” Lol, Twitter.
“We hope that 50 Cent was simply expressing enthusiasm for oral sex in an inartful way,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It would be unconscionable if he were calling on gays to commit suicide in the face of such tragedy. Only a despicable reprobate would do such a thing and leaders from Hollywood to Washington should condemn such rhetoric. Truth Wins Out calls on 50 Cent to clarify his remarks immediately.”
In September, there have been four gay teen suicides as a result of school bullying, as well as an incident where classmates broke a young man’s arm because he joined the cheerleading squad:
** Seth Walsh, the Bakersfield, CA 13-year-old who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied, died Tuesday afternoon after nine days on life support. Police investigators interviewed some of the young people who taunted Seth the day he hanged himself. “Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears,” Police Chief Jeff Kermode said. “They had never expected an outcome such as this.”
** Asher Brown, 13, an eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District in Houston Texas. Brown, his family said, was “bullied to death” — picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class, his mother and stepfather said.
** Billy (William) Lucas, 15, a student at Greensburg Community High School in Greensburg, IN, was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home Thursday evening — he had hanged himself. Friends say that he had been tormented for years
“He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation.
** Yesterday, a Rutgers University freshman posted a goodbye message on his Facebook page before jumping to his death after his roommate secretly filmed him during a “sexual encounter” in his dorm room and posted it live on the Internet. Items belonging to 18-year-old Rutgers student Tyler Clementi were found by the George Washington Bridge last week, according to authorities. Clementi’s freshman ID card and driver’s license were in the wallet.Clementi’s post on his Facebook page, dated Sept. 22 at 8:42 p.m. read, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
*** School bullies broke the arm of eleven year-old Tyler Wilson because he joined the cheering team. But he’s pushing through it, and he’s going to cheer and not give into the thugs. A longer report and full interview with Tyler and his mom from Good Morning America are here.
“In this time of mourning, we need voices of love and compassion,” said TWO’s Besen. “The last thing we need is a recording artist with 3,366,288 Twitter followers to throw gasoline on the fire and encourage hate. I certainly hope that 50-Cent makes it clear that his statements were misunderstood. If his statements were, indeed, anti-gay, then we are looking at a genuine monster.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their misinformation and exposes their leaders as charlatans. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
To his credit, this was a decent move. Chambliss is still a homophobe, but at least he seems stung by the fact that this happened, and that it came out of his office.
Joe doesn’t have an exact transcript, but relays the basic gist of what was said over at his place.
In case you missed this story somehow, a staffer in Saxby Chambliss’s Atlanta office left a comment on JoeMyGod which said, “All faggots must die.” It made the national news. Somebody is probably going to lose his/her job.
If you’re a regular reader [and really, why wouldn't you be?], you remember that last week, a bakery in Indianapolis came under fire for refusing to fill an order for rainbow cupcakes for the gay group at Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis. At first they claimed that they could not do cupcakes, but the owner admitted that he was scared that, if they made gay cupcakes, his impressionable daughters would turn into raging bull-dykes or something.
Well, the story is finding its way into the Christian “news” sources, and the results are predictably a perfect confection [see what I did there?] of hilarity/faux-victimization/stupidity, and everything else you’d expect from OneNewsNow. Here’s their headline:
Bakery displays morals, now faces eviction
The bakery, itself, you see, is a bigot.
Controversy arose this week after the owners of the bakery cited moral objections to a special-order request for rainbow-decorated cookies for next week’s “National Coming Out Day” observance at a nearby university campus. Stockton told the caller he did not feel comfortable in supporting homosexual values, especially because it would not set a good example for his two daughters.
Ya know…I just don’t see how, in the real world, taking money to make cupcakes in the color of the rainbow is “supporting homosexual values.” It’s a business transaction. I’m quite sure David Stockton has sold cupcakes to lots of people who would make him soil his britches if he knew anything about them.
Micah Clark of the American Family Association of Indiana says there are reports the city might evict Stockton, citing a local “anti-discrimination” statute.
“Indianapolis passed a sexual-orientation city ordinance five years ago,” Clark explains. “…We warned [at that time] that this type of thing would happen if they passed an ordinance elevating a sexual behavior to the same moral equivalent of race or skin color.”
I don’t yet know if the AFA of Indiana is making stuff up for victimization purposes or not, but the thing about anti-discrimination ordinances is that everybody has to play by the same rules. So.
Had the shop filled the special order, the owner felt he would be providing a microphone for homosexuals to celebrate their lifestyle.
Again, he would have been providing…cupcakes.
“If this were a Muslim-owned bakery, what would happen?” he wonders.
They probably would have made cupcakes.
In an interview with the Star, the AFA of Indiana spokesman argued for the rights of business owners. “It’s one thing if someone walks into a store and buys a cookie off the shelf, but [the Stocktons] were being asked to become part of the [pro-homosexual] celebration.
Wait, were they held down and forced to make cupcakes? A BAKERY?! What is the world coming to?
So, yeah, this is all pretty funny. The Great Christian Cupcake Crusade.
General JC Christian entertained me endlessly by writing a letter to said Cupcake Crusader, David Stockton, on Jesus’ General. The General understands Stockton’s fears, all too well:
Lord knows what kind of depraved pokey-pokey-sit-and-spin games they would have played with them. I can almost picture rainbow crumbs and frosting exploding from between their thighs like some magnificent multi-hued volcanic eruption somewhere deep in that land where the Care Bears live. Tongues, wicked searching tongues would follow, seeking the sweet rainbow goo splattered across all that hairy flesh, and no doubt, topping a few man-thingy helmets like colorful plumes of tasty Grecian iniquity.
Read the whole thing, for The General would like to thank David Stockton for his courage, and has come up with the perfect way to recognize him. Hint: it involves honey, naked bodies, and squirrels.
So, this is going to be a little bit different. You see, I’ve had this tab open in my browser since this morning, of a GRRRR so angry post from Peter LaBarbera, where he goes after his supposed allies at the National Organization for Marriage over their lack of concern over DADT repeal. NOM’s position is that they only care about keeping marriage from the gays, whereas Peter LaBarbera is committed to hating all gays in all places.
But here’s the thing: Peter’s post has disappeared! The top post at AFTAH is now his interview with somebody named Colonel Dick Black, and believe me, I’ve already made fifty jokes about that in my head. Did he have second thoughts about going after people who are more powerful in his own movement? Regardless, screen caps are magic, so you can see it and stuff. Here’s the picture, then we’ll talk about what he said below that:
Okay, let’s see what silliness the disappearing post contains:
I doubt that NOM would support tradition-minded, Christian soldiers and sailors from Small Town America being subjected to radical, pro-homosexual “diversity” lectures — but that’s what’s coming if NOM’s regrettable tweet comes to pass.
Maybe Peter realized that his already shrinking influence in his movement would go all the way down the tubes if he pissed NOM off.
Can’t NOM see that it is undercutting its own cause (and the truth) by pandering to the ”Gay” Lobby’s goal of homosexuality as a state-backed “civil right”? Long before “gay marriage” became a major issue, “sexual orientation” laws created the legal basis for punishing moral critics of sodomy. And let’s be clear: when pro-family marriage advocates talk up “equal rights for gays and lesbians” (as the Prop 8 appeal brief does here), they are engaged in a dangerous double-game — because so many homosexual ideologues believe their “right” to be approved as a homosexual supersedes YOUR right to disagree with their lifestyle. It’s a zero-sum game between “gay rights” and religious/moral rights, as lesbian lawyer and Obama EEOC appointee Chai Feldblum puts it; of course, she thinks “gays” should win and Christians should lose in most cases. In that sense, GLBT activists are pro-discrimination, even as they tout ”equality.”
Yes, Peter, our right to equality does supersede your right to keep that from happening. You’re free to bitch, as usual. First Amendment, etc.
Our constitutional rights come ultimately from God. Homosexuality, like all sin, is against God’s will, as is Therefore, it cannot be the basis for “constitutional” rights.
Bull-honkey, etc., as the United States is a secular nation.
To be sure, the NOM tweet is part of a larger, too-cute-by-half trend in the pro-traditional-marriage movement of gradually promoting the acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex relationships as part of a new, ”moderate” strategy to head off “gay marriage.” (We mustn’t appear “anti-gay” in an increasingly pro-gay culture, goes the thinking ….) This deeply flawed gambit could pave the way for a crippling of the noble movement to resist the normalization of homosexuality (the “gay” agenda), since a house divided against itself cannot stand.
This is why you’re labeled as a hate website and NOM isn’t.
In the end, NOM-type strategic capitulations help mainstream homosexual behavior and relationships in the culture – and they assist liberals in castigating the more principled fighters against the homosexual agenda as somehow “bigoted” and extreme. If you’re a truth-telling kind of person and hence committed to opposing the entire homosexual political/cultural agenda, be prepared to be thrown – like Randy Thomasson – under the New & Improved, ‘Gay-Tolerant’ Pro-Family Movement’s bus.
The pro-life movement doesn’t sell out its most core principles, and neither does the pro-homosexual crowd, for that matter, misguided as its goals are. In fact, most GLBT activists fight aggressively and tenaciously for full acceptance of homosexuality in all areas of society, even teaching it to young children. Why on earth would we compromise our principles when they are based not on lies but timeless truths and divinely-created nature itself?
So many euphemisms for “bigot,” he uses. “Timeless truths.” “Divinely-created nature.”
Anyway. So those are the words Peter doesn’t want the NOM folks to see. Not his best work, if you ask me.
Colonel Mark Abraham, head of diversity for the British Army, told People Management the lifting of the ban on gays serving in the military in 2000 had “no notable change at all.” According to PinkNews UK:
He added: “We got to the point where the policy was incompatible with military service and there was a lack of logic and evidence to support it.
“We knew a lot of gay and lesbian people were serving quite successfully, and it was clear that sexual orientation wasn’t an indication of how good a soldier or officer you could be.”
He continued: “The reality was that those serving in the army were the same people the day after we lifted the ban, so there was no notable change at all. Everybody carried on with their duties and had the same working relationships as they previously had while the ban was in place.”
Colonel Abraham argues that the lifting of the ban actually made the armed forces more productive: “A lot of gay and lesbian soldiers who were in the army before the ban was lifted, reported that a percentage of their efforts was spent looking over their shoulder and ensuring they weren’t going to be caught. That percentage of time can now be devoted to work and their home life, so actually they are more effective than they were before.”
Rapper’s Comments Follow Atrocious Day of Gay Suicides, Says TWO 
If you’re a regular reader [and really, why wouldn't you be?], you remember that last week, a bakery in Indianapolis 
