When I was in high school, the two most evil insults were “Paki” and “Nigger”. These days, I’ve heard kids using “gay” as an epithet, but it doesn’t seem to come close to having the force of those two words, as Gorsnak mentioned. Of course, I’m in Toronto, it may be different elsewhere.
And as others have said, I’m sure there are individuals who would react as phobically as Fionn’s parents.
Right, and even though i still think it’s pretty inappropriate, if it’s said with some humour and friendliness the epithet “gay” can actually seem rather tame.
But it’s partly in the attitude, and plenty of people who use it still inject a level of venom that suggests that there’s nothing but hate there. Also, “faggot” is still alive and well as an insult, and there’s very little ambiguity about how that is intended in most cases.
Awesome news, thanks. I hadn’t heard that on my CBC on Sirius (my only news from home of late).
Yeah, I know. And those who discriminate against others because of sexuality are mainly followers (so called) of the Christian ethic. I agree. But in general, intolerant bastards cover all ethical shades. In this case they’re just intolerant, narrow-minded arseholes who happen to be Christian.
Me, I’m non-religious. I can still be a bastard if I choose.
About Christians. Catholic true-believers especially. There is my mom. A Christian whack-job, depending on who you ask.
She’d take off and move across America. She’d land in big cities here and there. She’d befriend homeless kids. Female prostitutes. Young male prostitutes. Drug addicts. Lesbians, gay men. She was a regular mother Theresa, without the suspect Vatican expense account. You name the dreg of society, my mom would adopt one of them. I really and truly love my mom for that. She embodied what she always taught me a Christian should be, and would have slapped the shit out of me if she caught me judging someone.
Until I told her I was gay. Then things got weird and I was going to hell. She judged me in a way she never would have ever allowed herself to judge any other human being. What are you gonna do? Well, I can’t judge all Christians too harshly, as much as I’d like.
I think you misinterpreted. I’m pretty sure he IS going there.
As someone who just came out to my parents (and nearly everyone else) almost a year ago, I can say that coming out is scary enough if everyone is completely supportive. To make it even harder, no one deserves that. I haven’t seen the linked thread, but I definitely feel for the people who end up in that position.
Like John said, “Love is all you need.” If things just DON’T work out for Fionn, she DOES have that. And in my experience, that is enough. 
fixed half myself, mods…
Umm, mentioned in the other thread that hateful parent exist in Canada too… Haven’t talked with my family in over 10 years… Really strange too… I grew up with a strong feminist mother… and a racist father… From an early age I knew my father wouldn’t be able to deal with my being Gay, but figured my mother would be fine…
My father wasn’t good, which wasn’t a surprise, but my mother was HORRIBLE.
When I told them I was Gay, my mother told me she wished I could have been a drug addict, and my brother and his wife gave me a bible and told me to pray or I would go to hell.
She used to call me every weekend for many years and refused to ask about my life or about my partner. If I told her about anything we did that might have been remotely connected with us being Gay, she would tell me I was stupid, and change the topic.
I put up with it until I finally told her that if she was going to keep insulting and taunting me about being Gay whenever she talked with me, not to bother calling me any more. That was the last time she ever called - about 10 years ago.
It’s weird that the thing that bothers me the most is that my brother will inherit everything some day when my mother dies. Sort of like one last kick at me just because I’m Gay. It isn’t really important, but it just feels so unjust.
But you know what, I STILL wouldn’t have it any other way. I have lived my life with dignity as an openly Gay person in spite of my family. I have been with my partner for almost 20 years and I feel sorry for my mother for losing out on all the great things that have happened in my life. She and my brother stayed in a hate-filled rut while my life moved on.
You go girl! Boy? Whatever! That’s what I was trying to convey to Fionn. Are you happy? Do you love your SO? Does your SO love you? Praise Og and pie pie pie pie pie pie that they do! Finding your soulmate is SOOOOO much more important than any of your uninformed family might understand. If they refuse to see that? …
Fuck 'em!
Pity them for the patheticness that is their life.
Hell, for years the head of the country was a Queen.
I’m with Sampiro on this one…
One of my best friends chose my mom as the first “adult” to come out to. She was supportive and kind to him. When I was coming out, he told me that me mom would be great…
Not so. She didn’t disown me, or tell me I was hell-bound, but she used the guilt-card quite liberally. One of the most interesting things she said was “You took the easy way out!” She told me I “did this just to be mean to her” (??!?) Considering how incredibly non-judgemental and mellow my mom is, she was pretty hard on me.
That was then. She got over it. Mom tells me regularly that she loves me no matter what, and she loves FetchSpouse, too. She (in her eighties) called all of her friends during the last election to fight against her states attempt to ban gay marriage.
By the way, Mom is VERY Catholic.
I remember as a young kid fighting tooth and nail with my parents to be allowed to participate in a boys club called Brigades. The problem for my parents was that the club was being run by Mennonites who didn’t believe in infant baptism or more to the point, run by people who didn’t accept their beliefs. You can understand why I would regret your decision to pull your son from the boy scouts.
You mentioned earlier that in Canada, being gay wasn’t a bad thing growing up. To some extent I would agree. I recall back in the sixties in my home town there were plenty of gays, many of whom were associated with the Shaw Festival. As a teenager, I heard many stories of my more adventurous peers going over to their homes for free beer and getting their dicks sucked off. The adults of the community were well aware of the sexual orientation of these gays, but accepted their participation in the community without challenge.
Since I left the community of Niagara on the Lake the gay issue became a political struggle for gays somewhat concurrently with the onset of the fundamentalist struggle against abortion. These two issues are way more polarized in the States than in Canada. The only reason I can see is the political strength of the fundamentalist movement which is delaying the positive natural evolution of morality which appears entrenched in all the other western countries.
Is Cher a bible thumper?
Kids will pick on other kids for any reason whatsoever, or even no reason. If you’re different - no matter the way - you’ll get picked on.
I can understand your situation. My husband was very nearly an Eagle Scout in the BSA, I was raised going through Brownies, Guides, and Pathfinders in Canada. It was a very, very difficult decision for us to make.
Yes, they do. It happened to me in high school, in a little town out in the country. It became a sport among a lot of the neanderthals to torment me and beat me up. I was sprayed with hoses, had paint thrown on me, my locker was defaced… Nobody was even interested in anything I had to say about it. No girls would talk to me because everybody said I was gay. Not that they had the slightest evidence, mind you. I ended up having to leave school and eventually town because of it. I’m not any more gay now than I was then, but I have no doubt there are still people there who think I am. No wonder I haven’t gone back.
Quoted for response to fishbicycle. I know that there are places in Canada (usually rural and/or small) that still have homophobia running rampant.
Well, I hope she still is, what with her being on the money and all.
Anyhow, yes. I would argue that, although Canada in general is more gay-positive on average than the US, that’s pretty cold comfort to a lot, a LOT of people who have to grow up in horribly homophobic environments.
Hamish, for example, fled his homophobic, abusive parents and ended up begging on the street in Vancouver to survive, until he was able to come to Montreal and rebuild his life.
Even in Quebec, the first region in North America to have sexual orientation non-discrimination laws (in the 70s), there is still enough gay teen suicide to write a book about (Dr. Michel Dorais, Mort ou fif).
Sometimes, especially those of us who live in the big cities will forget what it can be like out of them; after all, even if we do have to deal with homophobia, there are resources à go go for us, resources that simply don’t exist en région.
It is a mistake to take an upbringing that wasn’t homophobic and generalize that experience, assuming that all or most people must have had that easy a ride.
Thank you for posting this. Now I feel less like an antisocial psychopath. I’ve been thinking about starting a thread like this for ages, and every time someone posts a thread like Fionn’s I get really close to doing it. I rarely post to those threads (I don’t think I’ve ever done so) even though it’s a topic that I feel strongly about, because what I’d like to write would be highly inappropriate. Something like this:
Good riddance to bad fucking rubbish. Cut them out of your life and never go back, and thank your lucky star that you got out and left those assholes behind you. If I ever get into another relationship and that person happens to be male, and a single one of my relatives has even a slight problem with it (possibly except my senile grandmother who doesn’t remember who I am anyway), I’d tell them that they’ve just met me for the last time. They have one relative less now, and I’m happier for it.
I’m sitting here with clenched teeth and white knuckles. It’s all I can do not to smash my monitor with my fist. Fucking worthless pieces of rotting excrement. Is life so perfect that they have to look for things to be upset about? Is the world so great that there are no actual problems anywhere, so we have to invent some? How the flying freakshow can they even be bothered to care about something that hurts or harms precisely nobody in the entire universe? How can they even muster the energy? And they not only muster it, they overflow with it. It’s like pushing a button, like they’ve had all this pent-up rage just waiting for one of their kids to come out of the closet.
Fionn is better off without them. Everyone is.
Sampiro, you still owe us the story of your coming out to Mama.
I hope Fionn is doing well, and I REALLY hope her family comes around.