« It's a done deal... | Main | Sad sad day... »
June 02, 2008
Tennessee county tries to ban and prosecute gay people...
... through legislature:
This happened in 2004 but I've finally decided I have something to say about it because 4 years later we still aren't out of the woods quite yet.
The county comissioners passed this into legislation with an 8-0 vote in favor of banning gays from their county. Apparently this was spawned in an effort to protect Tennessee's children.
Huh? I'm lost... because you know what? I knew I was gay when I was 7 years old. I knew I was gay before I even knew there was a word for it. Think of all the gay kids this hurts. What kind of self respect is a queer kid supposed to have when their county is trying to persecute and prosecute them. What kind of a life can a gay kid look forward to when their feelings and their existence is referred to as a "crime against nature?"
You know, it seems like everybody's looking to protect the sanctity of things like marriage but nobody stops to think that what they are defending is their own definition, not necessarily what's natural. There was never a day I CHOSE to be gay. It was certainly not fashionable, and it's made the majority of my life a living hell, but I stand up for who I am in case somebody in my situation can feel better about themselves because they know they aren't alone and that somebody cares but it's really hard to combat shit like this.
Of course the initiative didn't get very far and absolutely did not pass, but that doesn't erase the reality that all those gay kids have to think of themselves as an abhorment that people have tried to get rid of.
If this was any other group the county commissioner would have been brought up on charges of hate crimes.
You know what? Any kind of love is fine, it's hate you've got to watch. Who's damaging our children by showing them that love know's no boundaries? Who's damaging our kids by wanting to get married? Who's damaging our kids by diversifying America's culture? Think about it for a minute? All I see here is somebody damaging our kids by teaching them to hate people who are different and exile them.
I wish more parents could tell their kids that any kind of love is still love. When I grew up, I had to listen to my parents make offhanded remarks about gay people they saw on TV or in movies and talk about how that's what's wrong with society and how sick and wrong gay people were.
That hurt me. It took me a long time to build my self respect because when you attack my sexuality you attack me. That's a part of me I can't change and it hurts when even your parents think you are disgusting on top of all the playground talk you hear about queers and fags and all that. They say that close to 8% of people in the world identify as gay or bi-sexual. Gay men used to be gay boys so everytime you make an offhanded comment about how disgusting gay people are, you could be hurting your child without even knowing it. Did you know that 33% of gay youth attempt suicide at least once? That's more than 1 in 3 gay kids who try to kill themselves. Is it any wonder why with shit like Tennessee trying to ban their existence?
Gay kids are also up to 3 times more likely to use and abuse drugs in an attempt to escape their inner pain.
Are you willing to risk that your child isn't one of these kids?
The struggles of gay youth are often burried by admittedly more important matters like cancer, poverty... so on. But sometimes I think the world chooses to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. Mr. Fugate read up on his facts he may have realized that his choice to promote this initiative is a directly contributing factor to more cause for gay youth suicide and drug abuse. The sad thing is that he'll never be charged with hate crimes, he'll never be charged with anything. He's simply left a lasting impression in the hearts of the gay kids who heard about this and as a result may have felt that much less deserving of happiness and existence.
Hope it made him happy to hurt my people, hope it made him feel big to give another gay boy 1 more reason to kill himself. Dead gays can't talk, they don't get a memorial wall, most Americans don't even know that homosexuals were persecuted, or that as many as 15,000 served in Nazi concentration camps for being homosexual. or that of those imprisoned as many as 60% died through misstreatment in concentration camps. The history books in our schools don't seem to mind that.
Nobody seems to want to teach gay kids about their heritige, nobody talks about stonewall to them, nobody tells them about Nazi germany burning any literature on the topic of homosexuality, nobody talks about it with our youth. And when you are a kid, and you realize that nobody cares about your culture or cares enough to talk about your history... it hurts. Perhaps if people knew what homosexuals have been through, they'd be a little more pissed off when the preisdent tries to ban them from getting married. Or maybe that would hurt the light that America has spun on gays as being promiscuous. I can guarantee there would be more promiscuity amongst heterosexuals as well if the government refused to allow them to legally marry.
But people don't seem to see how this hurts gay youth. Or how much it hurst gay adults to watch our youth kill themselves 1 by 1 because of the horrible atmosphere the US government breeds around homosexuality. And all we can do hold support group meetings that get picketed.
Posted by Decemberice at June 2, 2008 07:03 PM