“Okay! Yes, there is a gay agenda, all right? There’s just two things on it! Number one: don’t get killed; number two: a decent brunch. That’s it!” - Elvira Kurt
"1) Full civil rights. Gay marriage, gay adoption, anti-discrimination laws, gays in the military, gay scouts, gay police, gay teachers, and anything else we can think of to frighten Pat Buchanan.
"2) We want the national anthem to come out in a 25-minute dance version.
“I think that’s very reasonable.” - Bob Smith
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Let’s face it, if you want to have an easier time in life it pays to be a likable (popular) person.
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I’m not quite sure why you believe that to be true. I’ve found that the popular kids in school were just about as varied as the unpopular ones.
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Well, not everybody.
Marc
Ah, but I think you may have mistaken the mark I was going for. I’ll grant that in the section you quoted it was not clear, but the overall point of my post was that it is not the children being bullied who are the problem, or any of their individual traits. The problem is that bullies are allowed to bully. I don’t know, or care, how they pick their victims. It doesn’t matter, because it isn’t the victims who are to blame. It’s the bullies, and the people who encourage their bullying or let them get away with it. They are the ones who need to change, not the victims.
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What? Me, mistaken? It just isn’t possible. Next thing you know you’ll be claiming that the world isn’t flat or that the moon landings were real. What kind of crackpot are you? :wally
Ok, so maybe I was mistaken.
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Allowed by who? I don’t recall the faculty of any of my schools giving permission to pick on any particular student. For the most part the bullies made sure that teachers weren’t witness to what they were doing. From what I remember of public school there are literally hundreds of moments each day ripe with opportunities to harass someone. Realistically, I don’t see how that can end.
It does matter and saying that it matters doesn’t mean I blame the victim. If we don’t understand why kids bully or how they choose their victims then we won’t have a complete picture of the problem. Any solution we come up with that only strikes one side of the problem is doomed to failure. It may be nice to say “we need to be intolerant of harassment” but the problem is a bit more complicated then that.
If you want to talk about who needs to change I’m of two minds. Obviously the bullies should change because the victims aren’t doing anything wrong. Of course I don’t have any realistic expectations of bad people changing for the better. Which means we need to equip those victims with the tools to make themselves less vulnerable.
I’ve been on both sides of the bully fence and I can tell you exactly who is most responsible for the encouragement and the free ride bullies get. The student body. Sure, in some cases the faculty might turn a blind eye but it is the student body that gives the rubber stamp to bullies from day to day.
Hopefully I’m not veering to far off topic here. I do apologize if I’ve hijacked the thread. While I do think bullying is a problem for homosexual kids I think their problems go deeper then typical bullying.
Marc
Good point, Marc. There are two ways to deal with that – adults have to send a message that bullying, for whatever reason, is flat-out wrong, and they have to send it early, before kids grow up into bullies and bully-supporters. And they have to equip kids to stand up for what they know is right, and face down people who haven’t gotten the message and start to bully others – and let the kids who develop the guts to do this know that they’ll be backed up by adult authority and by their peers.
I was sexually harassed on a regular basis (to the point of being groped once) when I was in junior high. When this was brought up with the principal of the school, his response was, “Well, you know, boys will be boys.”
Realistically, I think that can be changed. For cases of sexual harassment, for harassment on the basis of orientation, for ethnic harassment, for religious harassment, for whatever: “Boys will be boys” or “You know how kids are” or any of those things have got to stop being a reason not to bother dealing with students in pain.
At that point, sadly, many of the people who could really benefit from hearing the rest of the message will close their ears and minds and look at you and say, after about fifteen minutes of examples of inequal rights, “So you admit there is a homosexual agenda.”
Insert ripping-out-hair smiley here.
As for getting faculty involved, let’s just hope they aren’t like some of the ones I’ve run in to (not literally), who would deliberately turn their heads so they didn’t see. Or they’d eat lunch in a corner and put the shade down so they couldn’t see a thing.
Or there’s the time I was being quite obviously bullied not five feet away from one of the housemasters (boarding school). And I directly asked the housemaster if she was going to do something.
She sent me to bed.
Lastly:
“While I do think bullying is a problem for homosexual kids I think their problems go deeper then typical bullying.”
Indeed. However, it isn’t a problem on their part so much as problem this society as a whole has: we aren’t yet accepting enough of many different kinds of people. It goes from non-hets to recent immigrants to any number of oppressed people. It’s getting better, to be sure … but it’s not going to improve as long as the “you can teach hate” message is still being sent.
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Actually we’ve got to do more then just send out a message that bullying is wrong. For the most part administrators and parents already say that harassment is wrong. I know many of us view the bully as simply being a villain but let’s consider the possibility that they may have experience abuse at home or have other emotional problems which leads to the bullying. They’re not necessarily any more secure then the kids they pick on.
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Realistically we’re already at this level. These days you can actually sue the school district if they simply give you the “boys will be boys” routine.
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Honestly, I suspect they might still have a higher rate of suicide even with more acceptance. Puberty can be a difficult experience even for us hetero kids. I suspect in the coming decades society is still going to be hetero-centric simply because the overwhelming majority of the population is heterosexual. In that kind of environment homosexual kids might still have a harder time. I’ll point to Mr. Visible’s description of having to shower with the boys in the locker room.
Marc
gay teen: “Why are they bullying me? I didn’t do anything to them!”
His4evercounselor: “Well, they are wrong to do so. But you are going to Hell for being gay.”
gay teen: “What!? hmmmm, maybe I deserve to be picked on, if God Himself doesn’t like me, why should they?”
The reason the shower thing was so bad, Marc, was that I had no idea what I was feeling. I thought of myself as the only person in the school, maybe in the state who felt this way, and I thought I was a monster because of it. I felt like I was evil.
If I’d known the basic facts about being gay, if I’d understood even that I was gay, that I wasn’t alone, it wouldn’t have been nearly the problem that it was.
Saying that we need to solve huge overarching problems in society is fine; using that as an excuse not to do the small things that will help is chickening out.
I don’t suppose it would help to point out for the umpteenth time that fundamentalists do not teach that anyone is going to hell for being gay.
Actions are sins. The urge to commit some sinful action is a temptation.
Temptation != sin.
So far, we seem to be in agreement that bullying is wrong, and should not be allowed. cjhoworth’s description of her experiences seems to indicate that this is not limited to gay teens. So we should act against bullying of all kinds.
Anything else? Polycarp wanted specific suggestions for gay teens.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, I beg to disagree. Decent Christians, whether or not they believe that gay sex acts are always sinful, do not teach that anyone is going to hell for being gay. But an inordinate number of Bibliocentric people will (a) confute orientation and act, and come off with lines like “God said that homosexuality is wrong,” (b) take the “look upon with lust in heart” comment of Jesus to mean that the orientation itself is sinful, and/or (c) assume that the focus of homosexual people is not on their sexuality but on their sex life. These three fallacies are picked up on and encouraged by the folks Lib calls “religion politicians” who use gays as the convenient scapegoat (as blacks and Jews were once used) – who are (in their teachings) at once morally subhuman and deviously questing to corrupt the decent people of the world – in a quest for faith-based power over others, and are not above spreading knowing lies to achieve their ends. Any day now I expect to see something along the lines of “Protocols of the Elders of WeHo.” 
I apologize for continuing the hijack, but that bit of analysis into Christian views of gays and the varying attitudes that result seemed to me to be necessary in view of what Shodan said.
Would anyone like to post a list of concrete, individual steps that an average person might take, whether summarizing points already made or coming up with new ones, as a start towards answering the questions that have been raised, particularly Mr Visible’s.
And any gay teen lurkers who have some insight, or just need the opportunity to bitch about the raw deal they’re getting, are more than welcome – encouraged! – to add their comments. If it’s just a bitch about things, we’ll be able to see how we can help to correct the bitch-about-able things. And if you really feel you need to, you can always resort to the time-honored “I have a friend who…” line!
This entire thread is pointless without a cite that shows that there actually is a crisis of gay teens killing themselves. So, someone should show some statistics about how many gay teens kill themselves (specifically because of intolerance of their homosexuality) against how many teens commit suicide in general. Such a cite should be from a reputable research firm and not a gay-rights organisation.
UnuMondo
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Ask almost any victim of bullying and they will tell you that the faculty happily ignored their plight, or if they gave it any attention at all told the victim to “try to get along better”. And while virtually all schools have some sort of rule against bullying these are often buried deep in a thick student handbook that no one ever reads. Students aren’t told that they have the right to be free of bullying, and aren’t told what they need to do or who they need to speak to if they are.
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Did you read my post about the non-harassment policy at the high school I went to? It worked. It worked very, very well. It worked because everyone knew about the non-harassment policy, the faculty took it seriously, and most importantly so did the students. As I said in my earlier post, we were expected to help police each other, and we did. A simple warning from a peer was often all it took to make one student stop teasing another, with no need to even make an official complaint with the administration.
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Yes, of course. That’s why it’s so important to get the students on-board with any plan to end bullying. Most students are not bullies themselves, but some are willing to egg bullies on or and many will at least ignore them provided they aren’t the victim…and provided such behavior is unlikely to result in formal punishment or peer disapproval. Most students would also like to feel that they are safe at school and that no one will bully them or their friends. It’s not difficult to convince students that a non-harassment policy that protects everyone is a good idea, and all but the most disturbed individuals will be willing to go along with it. Students who do fall into the ranks of “the most disturbed individuals” need special help, and if the school cannot provide it for them they should be removed and sent someplace that can.
UnoMondo, that was already taken care of. Please refer to my earlier references to policy documents from the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of School Psychologists.
Like this quote:
In case you want more, this page is an excellent overview of the various studies that have been done on the subject. You might find this particular part of the page to be of interest:
Once again, for those of us who have trouble mustering up compassion for people unless they’re actually dying…
I don’t have access to data – I do recall a figure of 30% that was publicized some time ago, which was misinterpreted as “30% of gay teens suicide” by the media – the actual statement was that “30% of gay teens contemplate suicide.” That figure in itself, though, says a great deal about the problem. I don’t have a source for it, unfortunately. I suspect several of our gay posters have much better data.
BTW, while I grasp your implication about possible bias from an advocacy source – figures from anti-gay groups would be equally potentially biased – I’d be quite willing to buy something put forth by such a group where the methodology could be checked out; after all, they’re the ones with a horse in the race who are most likely to have an interest in publicizing such data.
Don’t think so, Polycarp, at least on this thread.
So far, matt_mcl is the only one who seemed to be conflating orientation and act, and I don’t think he would concur with the “Bibliocentric” label.
Unfortunately, every time His4ever or another of the fundamentalists on the thread try to keep the action/orientation distinction clear, as she did when she tried to answer your question about how she would treat a gay teenager, the response was to disbelieve her. See cjhoworth’s response for what I am talking about.
Which makes relatively little sense. If you want to keep the distinction between being gay and acting on a gay impulse, then wouldn’t you be able to distinguish between being a fundamentalist, and overt violence towards gays?
The fundamentalists are the ones pushing “love the sinner, but hate the sin”. The others are the ones who instinctively reject the statement, and accuse those making it of acting hateful!
Be that as it may, I am willing to accept for the purposes of this thread that bullied teenagers are more likely to suicide than the general population, and that teenagers who are perceived as gay are more likely to be bullied. Several posters, both gay and straight, have mentioned that they were bullied (I was myself, for a while - which is how I wound up with my user name). But I am not gay, and presumably whatever measures could have been taken to prevent my being bullied would also have benefitted whatever gay bullied teenagers in my high school as much as me.
So, should more be done? Are there special measures that we can take to prevent the bullying of gay teenagers, that do not interfere with the rights of freedom of speech, religion, and thought?
Regards,
Shodan
It’s because “hate the sin, love the sinner” is a creed that sounds really nice on paper but doesn’t really work in real life. Unless a person has super-human ethics (which, of course, most people don’t), he will naturally hate the perpetrator of the sin, along with the sin itself. I’m not saying that such a thing is consistent with every action, people don’t always hate other people who indulge in things they don’t agree with, but the more an action offends, the more the perpetuator will also. For example, I dislike Hollywood movies, but I don’t dislike the people that watch them. However, I am annoyed when they’re discussed around me. I hate spectator sports and everything they stand for, and I have a slight problem and prejudice with people who are really into them. I even have a small reaction when I’m reminded that ESPN exists while flipping through channels. I absolutely ABHOR robbers, and I could never love one in light of the actions they commit. I doubt I’m the only one like this. Therefore, anyone who realizes human nature can go against biblical ideology realizes that people who profess to HATE homosexuality, hate homosexuals along with it.
I can point you to a couple of people who do put the “love the sinner, hate the sin” idea into practice in their own lives – Rob who posts as Roblynn ("-lynn" is about as active as “-debb” of Tomndebb) on the Pizza Parlor being the perfect example, who believes homosexual acts to be sinful but stood by a dear friend who came out when he was rejected by all and sundry, spent a weekend with him to help him regain his equilibrium after the effects of his announcement hit, and is opposed to his friend’s present relationship apparently not so much because it’s male-male as because the partner is abusive.
But I agree that in general the term seems to be largely used as rationalization and justification for ostracism of active gays.
In general, I think that “love the sinner, hate the sin” is supposed to be about disagreement. My mother always used to tell me when I was small and misbehaved that scolding didn’t mean she didn’t love ME, but she didn’t like the fact that I called my cousin a Poopyhead.