“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is an old adage that I haven’t a clue who said it, but it is just that, a saying. It really isn’t true because words do hurt, far deeper than some cuts or bruises do. The effects of such words last a lifetime, cuts & bruises heal in a short time. And that is perhaps the problem I think many Gay Teens face, that the hurt of the words, the bullying, doesn’t end with taunts or slurs, but escalates into deeds that eventually kill.
Remember Mathew Shepard?
It is this notion that words aren’t as bad as saying having the shit kicked out of you or worse, is what perhaps may lead people to turn a blind eye to Hate Laws. I know many call it an infringement on their right to Free Speech, but what about the right to pursue happiness and to live free of fear? Does that count or is that the price people are expected to pay in order for some demon to spew their hatred and incite others to commit the more heinous acts? ( see Gay Talk’s Hatred Flourishes )
In some ways I suppose we are all smug and proud of ourselves because we are led to believe that things are better today than say 50 years ago. Perhaps, but that still doesn’t make it right, now does it?
Rather sad to recall too that it took a riot by Drag Queens at Stonewall to spark what we affectionately call our civil rights. I say affectionately because today in the states there are 17 states with legal rights to deny Gays & Lesbians the right to marraige.
If things are so much better, how man States had constitutional amendmendments banning same sex marraige then? Any?
In a 365Gay article, there is a new attempt to help Gay kids in Foster Care. And again it is a nice sentiment, but if we truly want to stop the abuse, the ridicule, the hatred, we need to start in the schools, not in some government bureaucracy.
“It wasn’t just the other kids at my group home who were calling me ‘faggot.’ It was the staff too. I had nowhere to turn for help,” a boy told the authors (see 365Gay article)
The fact that this kid felt he had no where to go, no where to turn to, is the sad part. Abuse happens, but if it is a female there are not stigmas attached. She isn’t given a derogatory label or made fun of and in schools today they drill it into a kid’s head that an abused female is a victim. Why don’t they do the same for abused gay kids?
Seems to me that once more we are seeing a double standard of ethics here. Bullying is wrong, as is name calling and not worse for this group or that group. Somehow we have the mind set that a girl is innocent, while condemning the male. I mean even if the kid is straight, they are tagged with demeaning words like ‘faggot’ and ‘queer’ and then the Government wonders why sex crimes against males is under reported?
“Although we don’t have good quantitative data on the exact numbers of these young people, there is a mountain of qualitative data showing that once in care, LGBTQ youth are re-victimized by the caregivers and professionals in their lives at alarming rates.” ( 365Gay article )
While I applaud the attempt to provide relief in the foster care system, it isn’t going to have much impact until Gays are given the same rights as their hetrosexual counterparts when it comes to adoption. Another double standard that screams to the impressionable youth that somehow being Gay is not okay, that it is dirty.
Councillors can talk till they are blue in the face. It isn’t going to help when society demonstrates by action that being Gay is not acceptable. This is just one more reason for the Gay Community to rally around and not ask, but DEMAND EQUALITY as is their God Given Right.
It is this type of intolerance that prompted me to write the book, The Secret. It is a story about having secrets, secrets that hurt and do kill. Fear is a powerful weapon and those who hate Gays, use it very well. It is why kids continue to let themselves be abused, because they have no other way of surviving.
If they tell, then instead of having the abuse confined to just the one or two abusing them, it suddenly grows to include friends at school, in the neighbourhood, and elsewhere.. No one wants to be called Gay, and yet why not?
I am proud of being Gay, it is who I am, and so I am not ashamed of it. However, society in the United States, for the most part, makes it seem dirty. When you see the so called leaders of your community ranting about Gays ruining the sanctity of marraige, foaming at the mouth as they call us sinners, as they demand the right to hold us back, what do you expect a kid to glean from all that? That being gay is okay?
Or that he/she has to keep their mouth shut?
