There’s going to be a lot of talk in the coming days about the new conservative victimhood meme — oh you haven’t heard it? Conservatives are the new bullying victims! You see, conservatives are now having to fight for their rights to employment and housing, and they face a hard road coming out as conservatives: some kids are bullied so much for being conservative that they end up taking their own lives; others are rejected by their families and kicked out to live on the streets. Moreover, hate crimes against conservatives are now the most common kind of hate crime, which is bit confusing for them, as they oppose hate crimes legislation.
Of course, all of the above is laughable. No gay person, activist or not, has ever tried to take any fundamental right away from any conservative Christian person. There is a debate to be had, surely, over whether fundamentalists actually understand where their rights end and where the rest of the nation’s citizens’ begin, but I don’t want to have it right now.
Instead, I want to spotlight the story of Iowa teen Ben Alley, who just graduated high school with a 3.25 GPA and is on his way to the University of Iowa. You see, Ben had the misfortune of being born to a Southern Baptist and his wife, who kicked him out onto the street when they found out he was gay:
Ben Alley misses his parents. He’s 18 and just graduated from East Marshall High School in Le Grand, with scholarships to almost cover his costs at the University of Iowa. It’s a time for open houses and pride. But he won’t be getting that from his once-close family — the Southern Baptist minister father and the mother who home-schooled him early on.
They’re not dead; he’s dead to them. In sophomore year, Ben informed his parents that he is gay. They informed him he wouldn’t be coming home after school the next day — or ever again.
[...]
Ben’s is actually two stories in one. The first is about a kid rejected, homeless and compelled to live independently at 16, requiring him to take a late shift job at Walmart to help cover costs. That meant most nights he didn’t start homework until 10:30. It’s about a young man raised in a home where being gay was considered “right up there with being a child molester.” At age 10 he was told by his mom that he didn’t deserve to live anymore, after she caught him experimenting with a boy the same age. Later, when he fought depression, counselors told Ben, “You’ve been taught to hate everything you are.”
Yeah. But please, let’s have this conversation about fundamentalist Christians as bullying victims. It should be entertaining.
I was under the impression that parents are legally responsible for the health, care, and expenses of their children until they are 21, regardless of whether they are living at home. Are fundies somehow exempt from this? As soon as his high school found out about his situation, he should have been put in foster care, and his parents sued for child support.
Where did the system break down?
Dunno. But Fundies believe they get a pass on everything, because of their special relationship with bigotry, I mean Jesus.
Sadly, this is all too common among the followers of a ‘loving god’.
Jeff, the age of majority is 18 in most states. In some, with a parents consent it is as low as 14.
However, this never stops a fundie from throwing their children out on the street. Children are their property, in their minds. No different then their family car. If they dont perform to expectations or false standards, then you get rid of it.
Evan… these are our kids. We have to give them the families that they don’t have. We can’t seem to fix the parents…so we have to love the kids.
and no…I don’t understand how parents do this…
As if any more evidence were needed to demonstrate that Fundies only value human life when it’s a fetus or in a vegetative state, doesn’t this story add to the evidence? If that boy had died on the street, the parents would be directly guilty because they abdicated from their parental responsibility to care for him.
Ben’s parents never really loved him; only an abstract, idealized version of him. I’m not sure if they are partially (or totally) sociopathic or if their completely fucked up religion was able to brainwash millions of years of evolution out of them (the need and desire to protect your young at all costs, even the expense of your own life). Maybe it’s a combination of both. Seems like baptists are baptized with viper’s venom instead of water.
I’m a lesbian and consider myself a libertarian (which translates to conservative when held up against the rest of the gay community), and I can tell you that I’ve gotten more open hatred from liberals for being right of center than I ever have from conservatives for being gay. You folks can spout whatever one-liners you wish, but you’re not winning any hearts or minds when all you do is insult these people.
Is what this “minister” did reprehensible? Absolutely. But it is patently ridiculous to claim that because this guy did something hateful means that all conservatives (“fundies” as you so lovingly refer to them) are evil hatemongers and all liberals are good, tolerant people.
The outrageous things you say make you the very hypocrites you accuse THEM of being.
I sense a lot of projection and self-flagellation in your comment, Mel. It’s weird that you seem more receptive of people who treat you nicely then vote against you behind your back, rather than people whose tone may hurt your fee fees, but yet who fight for the equal rights you and the rest of us deserve. And actually, we ARE winning hearts and minds, as is shown by the 9% jump in support for marriage equality in the past year alone. Please, please, please do not make us giggle and suggest that gay conservatives somehow had something to do with that.
Moreoever, the fact that you conflate “conservatives” with “fundies” (which are obviously part of the same section of the same Venn diagram, but are actually two different things) shows projection on your part, as does your suggestion that we say “all conservatives are blah blah blah and all liberals blah blah blah.”
Keep carrying water for those who seek to deny us our constitutional rights and freedoms, and we’ll keep fighting for the rights you deserve, whether my tone hurts your poor fee fees or not.
self hatred is a sad thing Mel….even sadder than only thinking about oneself (being a “it’s all about me” ‘libertarian’).
very sadly, in most states, this poor kid will have to fill out a college aid form that asks his parents income, etc. They will be expected to put (appropriately) pay for part of his eduation expenses. Most parents happily do so. These failures as parents will not, and he will probably be left in the lurch. This story is just to sad and tragic for words.
The numbers speak for themselves Mel. We’re between five to ten percent of the general population and yet our youth makes up as much as forty percent of the under-eighteen homeless population. When those numbers become equal, maybe then we’ll listen to you whine about us painting with a broad brush.
I get so sick of this hater victimhood meme. I think this young man should be in foster care and his parents sued for report. Don’t like it? Then don’t treat your kid like garbage you can throw out on the street. This young man should not be having to work at a job and not be able to do his schoolwork til some ungodly hour.
The arrogance of the right never ends…and I call them on it every chance that I get.
The numbers speak for themselves? Has anyone here considered the distinct possibility that we might well be wrong about some of the things we say when calling out the so-called “arrogance” of the right? Has anyone stopped to think about how arrogant it is to believe that we are always right and they are always wrong?
What is it that I hear so many liberals saying about Muslims? They’re not all anti-gay hatemongers. We just need to sit down and talk to them. We shouldn’t be going to war, we should give them another chance.
Why is it so impossible to apply that very concept to these fundies you’re bashing? At least they’re not kidnapping, threatening, starving, torturing and murdering gay people. In the Middle East, they do all of those things. We’re making strides because there are people out there willing to have a civil conversation rather than trying to insult people or scare them into acceptance by assigning labels to them that mark them as unwanted.
Believe it or not, these people do not make up the majority of the conservative movement. None of you would know that, though, would you? You’re too busy being correct to listen.