Four recent victims of LGBT oppression:
Billy Lucas: a 15-year old kid from Indiana who took his own life after enduring years of homophobic harassment and abuse. As Dan Savage noted in his column this week "Billy didn't identify as gay and may not have been gay. But the consequences of antigay bullying -whether the kid being harassed is gay or closeted or just different- are often the same: isolation, pain, despair and suicide."
Cody J. Barker: Cody was a 17-year old kid from Shiocton, Wisconsin. Dan Savage wrote that he "had planned to start a gay-straight alliance at his high school this fall. He recently took his own life.
Justin Aaberg: recently took his life after enduring abuse and anti-gay bullying. Justin was from Minnesota. He was just 15 years old.
And many have recently been shocked by the suicide of Tyler Clementi at Rutgers, who jumped from the George Washington Bridge after classmates surreptitiously broadcast streaming video of (and cruel commentary about) him in his dorm room being intimate with another guy.
The situation is dire. I applaud efforts like Savage's It Gets Better Project. Hopefully this will help some people in despair break through the isolation and pain of what they're going through. But we're going to need to do a lot more to really smash the oppressive, toxic social environment in this country that is marginalizing kids and destroying their lives. As Savage put it: . It's not just bullies that are the problem here: it's institutions, laws and politicians who create an atmosphere in which homophobia and LGBT oppression thrives. Compulsory heterosexuality is the system, and it has deep roots in our society: in ecclesiastical institution, law, employment conventions and rules, media, culture, the school-system, etc. And the bullies that are ruining these kids' lives, they are the police, they are the enforcers of this regime. They needn't even realize that that's what they're doing. But they are the shock-troops for compulsory heterosexuality and LGBT oppression. The violence of this regime is out on display for all to see.
If the tragedies above aren't a reason to immediately repeal all bans on equal marriage then I don't know what is. That's the tip of the iceberg, but we've got to start somewhere. This has got to end.
UPDATE: Richard over at American Leftist has a pair of good posts about two other young men, Seth Walsh and Asher Brown, both of whom took their own lives after after enduring cruel homophobic treatment and bullying. Heartbreaking.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
It's an epidemic
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Violent Right Wing Backlash '09 Continues
Following the cold-blooded murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, an 89-year-0ld White Supremacist has opened fire in the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum, shooting a security guard, before being shot by another guard.
The condition of the guard is not known, but the shooter is said to be "clinging to life." MSNBC has been reading some hate-filled screed from the shooter's, anti-Semitic, anti-black website.
Will right-wing Americans demand the terrorists involved in these crimes be put in Gitmo?
Update: Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, the security guard, has passed away.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Right-wing Chicago blog advocates BNP message
When you have to actually make a point of explicitly saying "now I don't condone this fascist stuff, but...", there's a serious problem. Over at the self-styled Right-wing "Chicago News Bench" which aims to serve up "conservative commentary when its needed most" (um... never?), there is a recent post advocating that readers take up a BNP (the fascist British National Party) text message and forward it widely. Apparently the author either checks the BNP website regularly or is on some sort of mailing list for ultra-Right politics.
The post title reads: "BNP Wants Gordon Brown To Fall Down on June 4th". Can anyone say 'fucking duh'? I'm sure the BNP also wants anyone with brown skin to fall down on that day as well.
Despite the anodyne treatment of the BNP in the post, the author claims "now I don't endorse the BNP, but...", and then goes on to speculate that "parliament would squelch any weirdness from the BNP" were the fascists elected to government. Guess that means he's okay if people vote for the BNP? Maybe this is what he means by 'weirdness'. Most people call it racist hatred.
You know, I'm sure there were sympathizers on the German Right in 1930s, not necessarily full-fledged brownshirts mind you, but good ol' fashioned reactionaries who thought the same thing about the Nazis (e.g.: "Oh I'm sure they won't be so 'weird' once they are in government"). If you think I'm exaggerating with this analogy, take a look at the neo-Nazi presence in the BNP throughout its history. They are fascist scum. There's nothing about what they stand for that should even be tolerated, let alone disseminated!
It's worth recalling here (via wikipedia) that according to "its constitution, the BNP is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948."[21] The BNP also proposes "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home."
Nice.
I guess this is a rather good indication of how worthless everything else on the Chicago News Bench blog is?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Feministing readers can get so confused sometimes
Take this thread about a store that refused to write a 3 year old's name on a cake, because his name is Adolph Hitler (sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell. I am not lying).
Commenters are filled with righteous indignation about how the PC police have really gone too far if a store refuses to do anything a customer wants. How is this okay but it's no okay for pharmacists to refuse to give birth control then?! (Because no one has the right to have their name written on a birthday cake, but in the context of liberal capitalism, we have to have the right to medication) Hypocrits! What would you be saying if the same store refused to write Hussein on a cake?! (I'd call it racist or islamophobic or just plain ignorant, and that would be the problem, not that a name didn't get written on a cake.)
Other commenters on the other side of the debate seem to be a little misguided as well. There are ways to defend the store's decision that have nothing to do with defending the imagined rights of a private company and everything to do with being a store that is able to discriminate between customers with ethics and customers without and the kind of money and business they want to take. Why do people think there's no place in politics (or life?) for talking about what's right and what's wrong and that we have to either condemn or defend every action (good or bad) because of some abstract belief in "rights."
p.s. If you're concerned about whether little Adolph got his cake, relax. Wal-Mart was up for the job.
