How to Fight Bigotry

Hola folks,

Being the degenerate drunken liberal that I am, I found myself browsing the Encyclopaedia Dramatica today. If you've ever been to that site, you know how you can find some pretty strange stuff.

So, eventually, I got around to the page about Angry Homo Kid. I watched some of this young mans' YouTube videos, and was struck by a couple of things.

This kid is an example of the brainwashing that many right-wingers are performing on their children. This kid is a member of the newest generation of bigots. Unless we can help him.

Notice how he claims "I used to be gay, but then I decided it's wrong, and now I'm very interested in girls." This from a kid who is what, 10? Used to be gay? Hmm...

Most homosexuals I've known did indeed know that they were gay when they were children. Did this kid? Somehow, I suspect the truth is closer to the fact that he is unable to distinguish homosexuality from prepubescence.

And yet, and yet...then there's the interesting fact that "He didn't really used to think about a lot of that stuff until he heard about it on the news." Three guesses as to what 'News' channel he must have been watching in his loving, Christian home.

Haha, just kidding, you only get one guess. And honestly, if you needed more than one, you're dumber than Michelle Bachmann.

This is what we're fighting. And we're not just fighting it to stop the spread of ideas and attitudes like this kid is expressing; we're fighting for the damn KID too. Look at him, he's in agony. Can barely restrain his misplaced rage. Fortunately, gifted and wise as I am in the ways of humanity, I detect a few things that may help.

Firstly, the kid is THINKING. G.I. Joe wasn't kidding when he told us that 'Knowledge is half the battle'. Watch the kid when he goes into one of his rages. It's almost like he's having a little fit; he twitches, blinks, moves his gaze randomly about for a second or two. The cognitive dissonance he's experiencing between what he knows (read: been told) and what he is subconsciously thinking must be off the charts.

The kid needs someone to tell him that he's normal, and thank him for at least trying to use his brain. Tell him to follow his thoughts down the rabbit hole. Maybe go find a gay person and talk to them. Maybe find a person from another religion (He is a Christian, and well, if you're in ANY OTHER RELIGION YOU MAY AS WELL WORSHIP LUKE SKYWALKER YOU LUKIST!) and find out that Jews' don't steal babies and own the media.

Bigotry and Hate cannot stand against the Flame of Reason.

If the kid is able to hang on and meet just a few people who can help him understand the conflict between the white-hot-cauldron-of-boiling-shit that is being poured into him by his asshat parents and the real world, he may just pull through.

This is where we need to fight bigotry; before it's entrenched so deeply that they've either fully rationalized their prejudices, or just don't have the energy or inclination to engage in reflection any more. Kids like this are the true front line in the fight for Freedom, Tolerance, and Reason.

If they get in much deeper than this, it becomes exponentially harder to pull them out of it, and the difficult factor increases by orders of magnitude as children turn into adults.

Talk to your children, your young cousins, family members, anyone out there. Stop this from happening to others. Stop the bullshit.

On a completely different note, yay Maine!

Congrats on stepping up to the plate and affirming that yes, when discussing 'Gay People', the operative and definitive word at play is PEOPLE, and finally granting them yet another group of rights they've been entitled to and denied for a very long time. Welcome aboard the REAL Freedom Train.

Post to be prettied up, snark and linkies added tomorrow when I have the patience to HTML it up.