The One Thing You Must Read Today February 3, 2012 Jill One town’s war on gay teens. Prepare to have your heart broken, and your faith in humanity obliterated. Trigger warning for suicide and homophobic terrorizing.
This is heartbreaking. It’s also infuriating as hell, because these kids are just being used as political pawns, and suffering all of the consequences. Disgusting.
Prepare to have your heart broken, and your faith in humanity obliterated I am feeling both of those things after reading the article. But I am glad this is getting publicity. I hope a lot of people read it and then think twice before bullying or putting up with kids/students bullying- no matter their personal opinions on LGBT issues.
This is horrifying. Does anyone have suggestions for who to contact/how to help? I tried to find a contact for the school district, but didn’t find anything.
That story brought tears to my eyes and I think it is heartbreaking that such hatred towards others could be condoned.
I’m trying to read this, but I’m so sick after page 2 I don’t want to keep going. I’ve had about all I can take of the world for this week.
I’m less than half way through the piece. I was about to say that I read it as a parent, but that’s only half true. I’m sitting at my desk, a middle aged man surrounded by professional colleagues who respect me, doing work that I love and feel good about, living the life I wanted, with my spouse and kids of my own who can’t wait to read to me when I come home … and I start reading about bullying and I’m so full of adrenaline that I can’t sit still. I’ll have to read this in three or four installments because it’s triggering and I have to stop. I read it as a bullying victim, though I left public school more than twenty years ago. So … that’s what I have to say about bullying.
I live in Minneapolis, and have pastor friends that are working on this issue to reach out to GLBT kids in Anoka-Hennepin to let them know that God loves them and wants them to live, and to offer them as much support as possible. That gives me lots of hope, but I’m still weeping at my desk a little. One thing you might do is reach out to District 202 (http://www.dist202.org/), which has been around a long time supporting kids. Most of Minneapolis/St. Paul is much more accepting of GLBT youth, I think. At least from the cities, Anoka-Hennepin is seen as an enclave of terrifying conservatism, especially since Bachmann was elected. Many of us boycott that entire part of the state because they voted Bachmann into office.
I can’t now read the article all the way through, but I bookmarked it for when I get home. These are kids, and kids need smart, top-down leadership from adults. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to identify Michele Bachmann as one of the adults who’s failed these kids. They’re her constituents. Comes the question: how the Hell do we get her out of Congress? She’s running for reelection. Is there anyone in that part of Minnesota who could, at the very least, force Bachmann and her cronies to spend real money?
If anyone is interested in sending a letter of support or donating, here’s a link for Justin’s Gift, an LGBTQ youth org in the Anoka area. It’s headed by Tammy Aaberg (Justin’s mother) and staffed by several of the faculty that were featured in the article.
There must be a way to get through to these people, right? Given enough time and education, there has to be a way to teach tolerance and open mindedness. I have to believe this, because otherwise, I’m simply going to sob. Those poor students.
If I could press a button and send each and every one of those horrible bigots — and the people on the school board who sat there and let all of this happen, and the parents and politicians and religious leaders who encourage the hatefulness — through a trapdoor to Hell, I’d do it instantly. Those poor kids. Never mind what my life was like; I keep thinking about my son — who came out as gay when he was 12 — and imagining him going to school in that kind of environment. I don’t think he would have made it.
There must be a way to get through to these people, right? Given enough time and education, there has to be a way to teach tolerance and open mindedness. As a teacher, I highly doubt it. Successful teaching requires that the student have a desire to learn. By definition, close-minded bigots see no reason why they should change their ways.
Thomas- Me too. I want to give all of them enormous hugs and get them the fuck out of that horrible place.
I finished it in one reading. I can’t even. I am just so fucking exhausted by having to struggle for survival and the survival of queer kids.
Also from MN-the Cities, and I already hated Stillwater and Rep. Bachmann with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. As a Minnesotan, I have to apologize to all of you. Jay: The only reason Bachmann could lose an election is if the whole district blinked out of existence. Anjasa: No. Small towns and suburbs are hopeless little boxes of conformity, and you can’t reach a hive mind.
Horribly, it gets worse. The anti-gay activists in that town aren’t satisfied with the toxic anti-LGBT climate in the schools – they want to make the school environments even more hostile to LGBTs and teach that AIDS is a gay disease. It takes a special kind of evil to see a suicide epidemic among LGBT teenagers and decide the solution is to make things worse.
Here’s the complaint filed in Federal Court which outlines the case. I hope the people representing these poor kids demands a trial and smokes them in court. Not only would this hopefully set some good case law on the subject but strike the fear in other districts pulling this shit. Deliberate indifference is just as bad as actively participating in the abuse. RIP Kids. I’m sorry.
Those goddamned staff. Cowards, all of them. No amount of preserved job security is worth the lives of children. I hope your modest, bloodstained paycheck keeps you warm at night, you morally bankrupt, craven assholes.
Well put, igglanova, and seconded. If I believed in hell, there would be a special place in it for adults who sell out the lives of the children in their care.
What kills me about Michele Bachmann is, she actually did a lot of good for teenage girls who struggled with eating disorders. Those were most of her foster children, and one of them told the New Yorker she owed the Bachmanns her life. How could someone be so kind to one sort of teenager and so obliviously cruel to another? Is that what the Christian religion is about? Kindness just for the right kind?
Hug for Igglanova. My small town had one extensively publicized bullying suicide and the school board has two lawsuits for bullying, but nothing like Anoka. The staff tolerance for such bullying should be prosecuted as child abuse, and the parents of the bullies investigated and prosecuted as necessary. James Dobson is another evangelical who has fought anti-bullying legislation. A religion which empowers rapists by forcible breeding and empowers bullying and child abuse should be run out (or educated out) of America.
There must be a way to get through to these people, right? Given enough time and education, there has to be a way to teach tolerance and open mindedness. No. Some people are lost causes and continuing to engage with their poison constitute collaboration and a failure to protect the children they have targeted for death in the name of their God. Make no mistake, this is not about ignorance. This is about a group of religious extremists who ultimately believe that homosexuals do not deserve to live and that their deaths, especially as children, will ultimately serve to silence the rest. These are not people worthy of education or time. We cannot be temperate or moderate the truth. The reason that gay youth have a higher suicide rate than straight youth is that gay youth face an unconscionable level of abuse and bullying from their schools, family, and society. Every single time we fail to challenge that we conspire. Every single time we advise someone to take the high road we contribute to the deaths of innocent children. We have a finite supply of energy. We must teach our own children and those close to us. We must teach them that this behavior is unacceptable, that standing up is not only allowed but a moral imperative. We must support them when they are wounded, fight for them when they are suspended, ensure their access to education when they are expelled for speaking up and fighting back. You cannot teach the violent core of Christendom not to hate, but you can challenge them into silence and impotent rage like any other bully. This is not a time for hope, but for rage. No more tolerance of the intolerant, no more half measures, no more dialogue, no more dead children. Justice would mean burning churches dotting the map every time a child is hounded into suicide by the evil of their congregants.
This really hit home to me because of my experiences with my older brother. My brother, besides being gay, is a high-functioning autistic. Not that such a thing was recognized, or even understood, in the early 1960s. All anyone knew or needed to know is that he was “weird.” His mental condition left him with no sense of social interaction or ability to understand others’ emotions or viewpoints, so that he would do things like write love letters to the quarterback of the football team. Things guaranteed to get him beaten up. And he was. The school’s response: “John really bugs those guys.” They eventually succeeded in pressuring my parents to pull him out of school at age 16. Not that my parents needed much pressuring. Even within our home, John’s isolation was complete. His condition was never spoken of or acknowledged in any way, except when my father would erupt in rage at him. Even when he tried to commit suicide in the bedroom I shared with him. Even when I peered out from the covers in my bed and watched my father perform CPR on him, and, a few minutes later, the ambulance crew come and take him away. He came back home a few days later, and it was as if nothing had happened. I suppose I could have asked some questions. But hey, I was 7. Silence really does equal death, people. Believe it.
No. Some people are lost causes and continuing to engage with their poison constitute collaboration and a failure to protect the children they have targeted for death in the name of their God. Make no mistake, this is not about ignorance. This is about a group of religious extremists who ultimately believe that homosexuals do not deserve to live and that their deaths, especially as children, will ultimately serve to silence the rest. These are not people worthy of education or time. We cannot be temperate or moderate the truth. The reason that gay youth have a higher suicide rate than straight youth is that gay youth face an unconscionable level of abuse and bullying from their schools, family, and society. Every single time we fail to challenge that we conspire. Every single time we advise someone to take the high road we contribute to the deaths of innocent children. We have a finite supply of energy. We must teach our own children and those close to us. We must teach them that this behavior is unacceptable, that standing up is not only allowed but a moral imperative. We must support them when they are wounded, fight for them when they are suspended, ensure their access to education when they are expelled for speaking up and fighting back. You cannot teach the violent core of Christendom not to hate, but you can challenge them into silence and impotent rage like any other bully. This is not a time for hope, but for rage. No more tolerance of the intolerant, no more half measures, no more dialogue, no more dead children Thank you. As others have said, silence equals death.
All the talk (in the article) that it’s not the bullying, it’s the students’ innate mental health is just like anti-choices saying ‘post-abortive’ women are more likely to be depressed when it’s usually the negative atmosphere created by anti-choice haters that causes the anxiety.
There must be a way to get through to these people, right? Given enough time and education, there has to be a way to teach tolerance and open mindedness. Having been forced to attend a Southern Baptist church for years, I have to sadly say that no, these attitudes are very deeply ingrained in them and have been turned into a core part of their identity. They are taught from a very young age that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, a perfectly factual account of history and God’s laws. They are taught that the world (i.e., anyone who does not subscribe to their version of Christianity) hates them, hates God, and hates the truth contained in the Bible. In their minds, they are the oppressed minority fighting for the truth against a hateful tyranny of atheists, feminists, homosexuals, liberals, and the ACLU. Words like “tolerance” and “open-mindedness” are anathema to them, tools of Satan to lure them away from God. They are taught to be Warriors for Christ, fighting sin and evil in an attempt to create a Christian America. Every time a prayer banner is removed from a public school, every time someone acknowledges a religion other than their version of Christianity, every time someone discusses homosexuality, premarital sex, or abortion without condemning it as a horrible sin against the will of God, it is a personal attack on their religion, on their very being. In order to get rid of this hateful attitude, you’d have to drastically alter their entire belief system.
All the talk (in the article) that it’s not the bullying, it’s the students’ innate mental health is just like anti-choices saying ‘post-abortive’ women are more likely to be depressed when it’s usually the negative atmosphere created by anti-choice haters that causes the anxiety. Yes, exactly. I will also add that the mental health gambit is a poor choice for a get-out-of-jail-free card. Even if this has nothing to do with homophobia (yeah right), there is obviously something failing terribly at the structural level if it is producing so many suicidal teens. So, we’re still holding you accountable, asshole. Get on that shit. Or do they not even believe that mental health is powerfully influenced by social factors? That depression is simply a tragic personal failure and never a reaction to injustice or neglect? Oh God, I think I answered my own question. Time to puke.
*content warning for descriptions of violence* Every time I think about this it drives home how completely terrible the whole situation is. I think about how lucky I was to have a comparatively supportive high school environment. Then I think about how that supportive environment still included me being hit in the face with a cricket bat and guys grabbing my crotch under the tables. How fucking awful does something have to be that I am grateful that my high school experience ‘only’ included relatively small amounts of sexual and physical violence? This whole thing is fucked up beyond my capacity to cogently think about it.
Trigger warning for really shitty homophobia. I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t talk to my brother for nearly two years. My family has been really shitty at various times and I’m perfectly content cutting toxic people out of my life as a defense mechanism (example: I didn’t talk to my sister for six months when she engaged in some serious victim-blaming over my assaults). My brother was a conservative, racist, homophobic dickface. I stopped talking to him for two years because he called a friend of mine a fag and said he would die of AIDS (swear to god, that kid later got cancer – and that made everything worse). I finally spoke to him one Christmas when my mom was having a get together at her place. I was hopped up on Xanax and everyone found out. It was AWESOME. They all walked on eggshells thinking I was about to snap making them infinitely more bearable, and also, Xanax. Anyway, during the time I stopped speaking to my brother, he had become a liberal. He’s no longer bigoted against gay people (though he still has a long way to go when it comes to race – luckily, he’s officially open to the idea that he might not know everything). He had an “a-ha” moment – and that’s what I think these people need. For him, he finally realized that the union-buster rhetoric on FoxNews was actively harming his livelihood (i.e. he’s a union member), and he started second-guessing all of their chatter. At that point, as EG pointed out, he was willing and ready to learn. You can reach these people, but you can’t make them have their a-ha moment. This article is terrible. I wish I could hug Brittany. Or buy her a beer. Something.
Some of these people can change. Others – not really. Let’s face it, there are always going to be folk who will be downright glad when a gay teen like Justin takes his life. To them it’s “good riddance.” One less “corrupting influence” in the world. Some people are just hateful on the inside. And unless they’re really lucky, they’ll go to the grave with that hatred still burning inside them. And igglanova is right. People have lost sight of the fact that no child’s life is worth a goddamn paycheck.
Bitterscribe: Is that what the Christian religion is about? Kindness just for the right kind? Yep. I sadly considered becoming an actual practicing Christian, (family is totally unchurched, but we celebrate Easter and Christmas) and every passing day, I’m glad I didn’t do that. And no, Bachmann isn’t capable of kindness. She only pretended to be kind to restore the girls to their proper weight and fertility.
I’m going to apologize in advance for the melodramatic tone of this comment… Reading this article KILLS ME. I knew I was gay from a very very young age (probably about age seven – before I could put it in words) but I was easily able to hide it all throughout elementary, middle and high school. When I came out at the age of 22 my parents had a pretty mild reaction. Overall, my ‘coming out story’ was pretty bland. I didn’t get teased or harrassed. I got off very very easy. Even so I can remember countless nights awake, crying in my bed at night because I knew I was a lesbian and I was afraid of what life would have in store for me – loneliness or rejection. Those nights were the first time I felt those awful feelings of physical pain – the hollowness and tightness in the very middle of my chest. I was depressed and shy and felt painfully isolated. It isn’t until now – at the age of 30 – that I realize how long it took for me to deconstruct the feelings imprinted on me at such a young age. In fact, if I’m not careful those insidious feelings still creep in sometimes. I CANNOT IMAGINE what it would have been like to have been openly mocked in school everyday. I can honestly say I have no idea if I would have made it or not. Reading this story makes me sick to my stomach for these kids. It makes me angry and sad and mostly just angry. If the adults responsible for the policies put in place that left these children (13 years old – do you remember being 13? They’re BABIES) out in the cold felt half as much isolation and pain as they have caused, I’m confident every one of them would change their minds. The idea that they wouldn’t is unimaginable to me. For anyone out there would might have an inkling of doubt as to whether or not these kids have a choice in who they are attracted to – I think the suicide rates quoted in the article should put those doubts to rest.
First off I’ll say that I’m a Brit, and that I was privately educated at an all girls school, where bullying was emphatically not tolerated in any form. I still had multiple shades of (physical and emotional) stuffing beaten out of me on a daily basis, for reason of being ‘weird’ (mild Aspergers and OCD). Just reading the above piece caused me to suffer a flashback and a near panic-attack. I cannot imagine for one second what these children are going through. I cannot imagine what sort of coward could, willingly or otherwise, stand by and watch it happen. If I though for one moment that I wouldn’t be told to stop interfering in something that I didn’t understand, I would go and give these kids a big hug and tell them that there is nothing wrong with them, that there are people who love them, and that the best revenge is living well.
Or do they not even believe that mental health is powerfully influenced by social factors? That depression is simply a tragic personal failure and never a reaction to injustice or neglect? Oh God, I think I answered my own question. Time to puke. I’m working on writing something about that right now. The short answer is that, no, because of how we look at madness in America the specter of “mental health” is often invoked to silence and oppress people who have been subjected to terrible trauma. If you abuse someone enough to make them mad, you can always say “well look at them, they’re crazy.” Its why madness is being invoked, because when we say “mental health” people think of physical health. Its a subtle way of saying “your kid couldn’t get polio from not talking about it, how could they get suicide?”
Willaim is right. Bigots, like empires, understand only power. Getting through to them is not an option. The only question is what tools may best be brought to bear to make them stop.
It makes me sick that this is happening only an hour away from my old high school, which could not have been more different. I feel so lucky that I went to school in an atmosphere of acceptance and respect. But it’s amazing to me how narrowly I avoided this kind of situation. My hometown is very demographically similar to the Anoka-Hennepin area. The only thing we’re missing? The extreme conservative Christian element. What a difference it makes.
I think what bothered me most was the statement about how teachers could not support or give the impression that they support “GLBT people.” They’re not even PRETENDING that this is about a behavior or a “lifestyle” or choices or whatever. Granted, that would be pretty disingenuous and “hate the sin, love the sinner” bullshit is annoying, but still. They don’t even pretend that it’s about anything other than straight-up hatred toward a group of people.
After reading that, all I can think is that Tammy Aaberg is an amazing person. I don’t even know what I would have done had that been my son.
How fucking awful does something have to be that I am grateful that my high school experience ‘only’ included relatively small amounts of sexual and physical violence? This whole thing is fucked up beyond my capacity to cogently think about it. Seriously. Many of my teachers by the time I was obviously & visibly queer were more or less supportive. Even with a gay principal (possibly especially with a gay principal) there was a lack of consensus on how to deal with gay kids. My school was K-12, and the male teachers who taught lower and middle school students obviously felt they couldn’t be out. It was heartbreaking to me when I realized that I’d had so many gay role models who could only let me know with a wink and a nod (or running into each other at queer stuff when I was in high school) that they knew where I was coming from. Once I transitioned I felt doubly robbed. If i had known happy queer men as a kid, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me so long to realize that I wasn’t as alone as I thought, I just didn’t know there were guys who existed in the world the way that I did. It took moving to the west coast for law school and meeting the gay male friends there to figure it out. Gay men who remind me a lot of those teachers who weren’t allowed to talk to me about their lives.
[How fucking awful does something have to be that I am grateful that my high school experience ‘only’ included relatively small amounts of sexual and physical violence?] The old double whammy. It’s bad enough when we impose such a low standard of gratitude on ourselves. And equally bad when the worst examples are used as an excuse by other institutions to avoid addressing their own problems and instead just tell us to be thankful it’s not worse. Almost exactly one week ago, I sent a message of encouragement to a young friend halfway across the US that this might be the year he finds a boyfriend. Three days later, he was announcing that his parents had found him out. His father, who has “proof” that homosexuality is a sinful choice, is cutting him off from all the “temptations” in his life, and is determined to make him straight “again”. The closest thing to a constructive response I could come up with was to offer to tell his parents about how mine tried to straighten me out, to considerable expense and no helpful consequence to them, but of course his parents would have none of it. I think I’m too numb to feel angry.
If i had known happy queer men as a kid, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me so long to realize that I wasn’t as alone as I thought, I just didn’t know there were guys who existed in the world the way that I did. It took moving to the west coast for law school and meeting the gay male friends there to figure it out. Gay men who remind me a lot of those teachers who weren’t allowed to talk to me about their lives. Ah, but that’s the entire goal. To completely rob queer youth, trans youth, nonbinary youth, or maybe kids who are just not perfectly compliant gender performers of role models, so they will feel utterly alone and force themselves to conform or die. That’s the point. Don’t think this rash of suicides is a side-effect, it’s the goal. To force these kids to be nice and cis and hetero and binary conforming, or fucking kill them. And they dance around it, but the fact is that’s the intent, to isolate these kids until they break down completely and are desperate to do anything to make it stop.
There must be a way to get through to these people, right? Given enough time and education, there has to be a way to teach tolerance and open mindedness. No. No, there’s no way to reach these people. Trust me. Unfortunately, I live in one of the most conservative parts of the United States, a region known as the “Buckle of the Bible Belt.” The people here are beyond backwards. Anytime they encounter something (or someone) they don’t understand, they go on the attack. Cruelty, sadism, intolerance and hatred. That’s all they understand. And what’s really pathetic is that they think this is the right way to live; they believe there’s nothing wrong with it, you’re the one who’s living in sin, after all. Nope. No chance of change for these peanut-brained bigots. Sorry.
It’s also infuriating as hell, because these kids are just being used as political pawns, and suffering all of the consequences. I am so fucking sick of hearing anyone at all use this phrase. Those kids are not pawns. They are targets. They are victims. They aren’t being used to attack someone else, they are the people being attacked. They are not outside of these issues somehow, they are at the core of these issues. And this is not a fucking game of chess, this is, quite literally, life and death. This is people’s lives. This is these kids’ lives. And once upon a time, this was my life. I was an out queer teen at a high school in a medium-sized town in Florida. As far as I know, there was no official policy, but my teachers were just as effectively gagged as the ones in Anoka-Hennepin, and they never did a damned thing to protect me when I was bullied. I went to school with kids who were openly members of the Klan. They received more support from the administration than I did. And I was not a pawn. I was a victim. I was not being used, I was being personally attacked. Claiming these kids are pawns is saying that they are somehow outside of these issues. They aren’t. They are intimately concerned with these issues, and cannot choose to be outside of them. They are incredibly vulnerable, and they have far less power than those making war on them, but that does not make them pawns. It makes them victims. Positioning them as pawns belittles their real battles.
I was tearing up at the end of the article, and I cannot in any way understand how the teachers can live with themselves – how can they go to work, knowing they are enabling an environment where kids are killing themselves?
I couldn’t read past page 1. How can these people call themselves Christians, driving children to suicide?
I couldn’t read past page 1. How can these people call themselves Christians, driving children to suicide? Deus vult.
Bitter Scribe: Is that what the Christian religion is about? Kindness just for the right kind? Yes. And, no, there is no way to get through to these people. What John Cole said: They fucking hate you. William: I wish you had your own blog.
How can these people call themselves Christians, driving children to suicide? You want a Jew to answer that? Because it seems pretty consistent with the actions of people calling themselves Christians historically to me.
You want a Jew to answer that? Because it seems pretty consistent with the actions of people calling themselves Christians historically to me. As a queer pagan, I have to pretty much agree. The biggest difference is that these days they’re driving us to kill ourselves, rather than using their own hands or weapons.
@ EG: yup, sounds about right. All one has to do is pick up a history book. Clearly what’s happening here is an extermination campaign (as one commentor brilliantly noted) a policy of “conform or die” (one, might I add, that religious fundamentlaists are also directing at women, by promoting misogyny and rolling back our rights). We would mistake this virulent strain of rabid hatred for anything else at our own collective peril.
As a queer pagan, I have to pretty much agree. The biggest difference is that these days they’re driving us to kill ourselves, rather than using their own hands or weapons. You might want to check the front page again before thinking that we’ve even got that far.
Well, shit. OK, forget that, they haven’t changed a bit. Nietzsche said it best: “It is not their love of humanity but the impotence of their love of humanity that prevents today’s Christians from burning us.”