After reading this thread, it got me wondering what it would take to stop the subtle and not-so-subtle harassment and abuse of gay people in this country. I mean, there are cases described in that thread of teachers and police officers looking the other way and not really pursuing offenses made against gay people, even if they are serious assaults that leave the victims bloody, or with broken bones, etc.
And one thing I noticed was that there were plenty like me posting that they did not know that such offenses were occurring! Surely most of these stories should be making the national news media?
And then again, maybe not.
Sometimes I think that it will take another Columbine to really open the public’s eyes, with this one being a gay high schooler taking out the entire football team with an AK-47 for beating him up in the shower and making him eat his shit. Something that will make police officers afraid to let offenses against gay people slide, as national media puts pressure on them. Something that will make teen punks stop harassing their gay or gay-like classmates because they don’t know if this guy is gonna snap and kill them all.
Will it take a tragedy like Columbine to really get people motivated to stop the abuse and discrimination that even extends to our laws (no gay marriages save in one state) and institutions (military, don’t ask don’t tell). Or will even that be enough? Do we need a gay version of the race wars out there to really change this almost institutionalized acceptance of anti-homosexualism?
Windwalker
PS: A small evil part of me wishes that some gay dude (or gal) does go berserk on his or her tormentors and wastes them all, just to put that fear in would-be gay bashers hearts.
I think it more likely that if a gay person “snapped” and went on a rampage it would make the bigots feel justified in hating and persecuting them more. A line of thought like “See - not only are they perverts, they’re dangerous perverts.”
But yeah, I have fantasies of various oppressed folks rising up to slay their tormentors, too.
If Matthew Shepherd’s death didn’t generate enough attention, nothing will. I think you overestimate the media effect of Columbine as well: bullying still goes on in schools, but it’s not in the news.
I hope it wouldn’t take another Columbine to achieve ANYTHING.
However, the accounts of gaybashing in the thread referred to above, as well as other accounts, remind me of accounts of apartheid and segregation I read about before colour became less of a defining factor (not that racism is yet eliminated either), even down to using the bible to justify one’s actions.
Someone posted (and I can’t find it now, apologies) that the OT verses in Leviticus which outlaw homosexuality were repealed when Jesus gave the new commandment - “love one another, just as I have loved you”. I guess that simple rule has got its provisos, amendments and small print too, huh?
So maybe it’ll take a gay Martin Luther King figure to change people’s minds. Sure, (s)he’d be villified, reviled, maybe even assassinated, but Hey! You’d get a street named after you! (And it’d be the most FABULOUS street in America!)
Either way, some peoples eyes may never be opened, sadly…
(I’m not gay, not even particularly pro-gay, just got a live and let live attitude…)
Didn’t Columbine foster even more distrust of the ‘outsiders’ in schools? All I remember hearing was how the quiet kids were prone to be insane and could snap at any minute, killing off the ‘good kids’ (read: jocks, cheerleaders, devout christians).
Remember that whole ‘She Said Yes’ thing? Columbine set the atheist movement back about 50 years.
What makes you think a “gay Columbine” would not have the exact opposite effect? Wishing for it to happen should be soundly condemned, which I feel compelled to do.
What about them? A very different situation. How many of the rioters got hold of multiple firearms and started murdering as many people as they could?
If that were to happen in a “gay” context, we’d start seeing people perceived as “gay” swinging from trees all over the country.
There is a difference between standing up for your rights and engaging in mass murder with a political excuse. The latter will just harden the majority against “your” group.
And what will happen afterwards is that thousands of perceived “gay” people will be killed in retaliation.
That kind of thinking means that you are EXACTLY like the guys who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and deserve exactly the same treatment they do. You are a wannabe terrorist.
I think that slowly, the public is opening its eyes. Hell, they just legalized gay marriage in Canada. Could that have happened 10 years ago? There are GLBT clubs in High Schools now. Were there 10 years ago?
There are better ways than violence to achieve equality. There has to be.
I think I picked the wrong school shooting, as the Columbine kids weren’t even really shown to be bullied. I’m thinking more of a case where a gay person (or persons) are well-known by everyone to be tormented/tortured/etc, and then they retaliate violently.
I apologize if it makes it seem like I want another massacre to occur; I just think that it has to be on the level of a massacre for the national media to run with it. If such an event would occur, I would not want the massacre to be glorified, I would want the conditions that led to the massacre (i.e. the abuse of the homosexuals) to be highlighted, which inevitably will be. That’s why I think a gay version of columbine (where the gay kids were really being seriously abused) may be necessary to open eyes about the plight of some gay people. It will almost certainly do harm, as people may judge gay folks to be capable of insanity, evil, etc. But it will also certainly do some good, showing people that some gay people still experience great evil at the hands of others. And I bet school administrators and teachers will NOT tolerate the known gay bashing that goes on in their halls any longer, if such an event were to occur.
As I said, it is only a small evil part of me that wishes for this. That small evil part of me is just that. A small evil part of me. One that remembers even minor high school torment of some of my friends (not gay-related) with anger. One that seethes with hatred at what some people are still getting away with and that wishes that just some of them get their just desserts.
I don’t really want this to happen. I just wonder if this is what it will take to make people care (even if for the wrong reasons). Because as it stands, anti-homosexualism is basically institutionalized in our society. The government just says no to gay marriages and gay participation in military. Some schools let harassment of gays persist with their knowledge. The most prevalent religion by far says homosexualism is an abomination, and while some groups are still loving of homosexuals, another set of Christian groups are trying to convert them (I just saw one of those on CNN), preach of their evil, which encourages some ignorant people in those groups to take this to the level of violence and even murder.
And the general population is responding with about 1/10th the interest that was demonstrated during the civil rights movement.
I agree with Broomstick and others; a massacre perpetrated by a gay man, even a horribly persecuted one, will likely cause nasty overreaction in the population in the short term, and result in nothing positive in the long term. Remember Andrew Cunanan, that loony-bird spree killer who included fashion designer Gianni Versace among his victims? Remember the barely-concealed glee with which the news media recounted his flamboyantly gay lifestyle? It was bad enough that he was a murderer, but his crimes seemed to take a back seat to sensationalized depictions of his sexual preference.
Now, I don’t think it would go particularly well the other direction, either — say, Fred Phelps decides he’s not long for this world and goes out in a blaze of glory by bombing a cafeteria at a California arts school, or something. Remember, the Holocaust was only a couple of generations ago, and while it opened a lot of eyes and drove anti-Semitism deep underground, it didn’t come close to wiping it out; even today, while the systematic murder of millions of people still remains in living memory, organized hatred of Jews is making a roaring comeback. (And hardly anyone even remembers the homosexuals and Romani and everybody else who went to their deaths alongside the Jews.)
Hate runs deep. Fear of homosexuals is almost a default position based on biological wiring, and certainly encouraged by social design; in the current generations, only those who have made a conscious decision to get over it have progressed. It’ll happen eventually, but it’s going to take time, nothing more and nothing less. IMO, no single event will accelerate the evolution. Even now, after decades of lynching, institutionalized racism, legal segregation, mass riots, prominent assassinations, and other high-profile agonies, we’re still trying to figure out, as a society, how to treat each other equally without regard to skin color. If all of that suffering couldn’t drive out our irrational hatreds, no single massacre, whether perpetrated by or against homosexuals, will make a bit of long-term difference in the gender-role struggle either.
That strikes me as a little harsh–Windwalker says that a small, evil part of him or her wishes for something like this, and you start drawing comparisons like that?
I agree that a “gay Columbine” would have more negative than positive effect (even beyond the obvious awful result of people being dead), but calling someone a wannabe terrorist because they admit that a part of themselves they know is wrong occasionally fantasizes about the oppressed-slaying-the-oppressors seems a bit excessive to me. As far as I could tell, it was fairly clear from the OP that Windwalker doesn’t actually want something like this to occur.
That strikes me as a little harsh–Windwalker says that a small, evil part of him or her wishes for something like this, and you start drawing comparisons like that?
I agree that a “gay Columbine” would have more negative than positive effect (even beyond the obvious awful result of people being dead), but calling someone a wannabe terrorist because they admit that a part of themselves they know is wrong occasionally fantasizes about the oppressed-slaying-the-oppressors seems a bit excessive to me. As far as I could tell, it was fairly clear from the OP that Windwalker doesn’t actually want something like this to occur.