Homophobia Is Killing Our Youth

Yesterday was the National Day of Silence - a program started in the 1990s at the University of Virginia - and with the recent deaths of teens the mainstream media seems to be waking up if ever so slightly to the fact that homophobia is killing our nation's youth. Unfortunately, they stories do not properly lay the blame for these deaths squarely at the feet of the professional Christians and anti-gay hate mongers of the Christian Right who do all in their power to create an atmosphere where gays are denigrated, youth are bullied to the point of suicide, and it's fine to kill LGBT citizens for being different. As I have noted often, I simply cannot understand the twisted mindset where tormenting people and disseminating lies and hatred are deemed to be the cats of Christians. Is money and perceived political power - not to mention feeling self-satisfied and superior - that important to people like Rick Warren, Tony Perkins, and James Dobson that people must die? Disturbingly, Barack Obama has appointed individuals representing this foul set of Christianists to his advisory counsel on faith based issues rather than exile them to the political wilderness where they rightly belong. First the Huffington Post takes a look at the toxic phenomenon. Here are some highlights:

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Today, across the country schools will participate in a National Day of Silence to protest the homophobic bullying that is killing teenagers and honor those whose lives have been taken by the barbaric hands of hatred. In less than two years there have been four brutal teenage deaths resulting from homophobic bullying. Just last week Carl Walker, an eleven year old in Springfield, Massachusetts , who never actually identified as gay, hung himself with an extension cord from the 3rd floor landing of his home. This was after his mother repeatedly implored his school to do something about the homophobic bullying he experienced.

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Last summer a transgendered teenager, Angie Zapata, was brutally murdered in Greeley, Colorado. Last February Eric Mohat, a 17-year old student from Ohio, who also never identified as gay, committed suicide after being repeatedly harassed with anti-gay epithets such as "fag" and "homo." Also, last year, Lawrence King, a fifteen year old who identified as gay, was shot in the head twice in his English class. He died a few days later. His heart was donated the day after Valentine's day.

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Change has been a pervasive concept in our country over the past two years. Barack Obama's presidential election, along with the dissolution of our economic institutions, are catalysts for significant change. We need to start applying this same principal of change to the institution of hatred entrenched in our culture. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, and social psychology pioneer Albert Bandura have both shown that aggression and hatred are learned behaviors. If a child is taught to hate and fear diversity, then the next place he or she expresses that hate is at school. If hate is learned, then it lies on the shoulders of our schools, church officials, parents, teachers, and communities to teach our young kids acceptance before they continue hurting each other, and before they become adults who will likely pass their hatred to the next generation.

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[P]eople who choose to hate in the name of "their" God are simply immersed in a human experience that is built on irrationality, fear, hatred and ego; . . . I cannot say when, but I have faith that one day those who attack in the name of "their" god will discover that they are also attacking themselves.

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Judith Warner in the New York Times also chimes in on this issue and looks at the releated issue of how perverted ideas of masculinity can be in American society where those who do not fit one a particualr narrow range of stereotypes get treated with contempt. Personally, I have always felt that males who feel threatened by gays are the ones who have issues, not the gays. Here are some highlights from Warner's column:

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I’m only partly talking about homophobia, which, though virulent, cruel and occasionally fatal among teenagers, is not the whole story behind the fact that words like “fag” and “gay” are now among the most potent and feared weapons in the school bully’s arsenal. . . . . It’s really about showing any perceived weakness or femininity – by being emotional, seeming incompetent, caring too much about clothing, liking to dance or even having an interest in literature.

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“To call someone gay or fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that you’re nothing,” is how one teenage boy put it to C.J. Pascoe, a sociologist at Colorado College, in an interview for her 2007 book, “Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School.”

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The message to the most vulnerable, to the victims of today’s poisonous boy culture, is being heard loud and clear: to be something other than the narrowest, stupidest sort of guy’s guy, is to be unworthy of even being alive. . . . . Boys were showing each other they were tough. They were afraid to do anything that might be called girlie,” she [Barbara J. Risman, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago] told me this week. “It was just like what I would have found if I had done this research 50 years ago. They were frozen in time.”

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Malina Saval, who spent two years observing and interviewing teenage boys and their parents for her new book “The Secret Lives of Boys,” found that parents played a key role in reinforcing the basest sort of gender stereotypes, at least where boys were concerned. “There were a few parents who were sort of alarmist about whether or not their children were going to be gay because of their music choices, the clothes they wore,” she said. Generally, she said, “there was a kind of low-level paranoia if these high-school-age boys weren’t yet seriously involved with a girl.”