Rolling Stone just published an article on the inexcusable rash of teen suicides that have ravaged the Anoka-Hennepin school district in Minnesota.
I won’t rehash it here but it deserves a thorough read as it reveals what most of us already knew… stigmatizing the LGBT community creates an unbearable sense of defeat and feeling of utter loneliness. Barb Anderson (pictured), an anti-gay aggressor with the Minnesota Family Council, is just one of the dangerous mouths highlighted in the story.
“Open your eyes, people,” Anderson recently wrote to the local newspaper. “What if a 15-year-old is seduced into homosexual behavior and then contracts AIDS?”
This woman, in an interview with Peter LaBarbera, went as far as to say:
“…the greatest threat to our freedom and to the health and well-being of our children is from this radical homosexual agenda which is just so pervasive… [it is] a badge of honor to be called a hate group.”
This vitriol is destroying our solidarity and sending our youth into spiraling pits of despair and, as is the case with the Anoka-Hennepin school district, suicide. It is the same hateful talk espoused by Tennessee’s Stacey Campfield (as noted in earlier posts).
Anderson was a proponent of the so called “No Homo Promo” policy which was quietly passed in the school district. Is it so similar to Campfield’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
It is this assertion that “gay” is something to hide, something to avoid, something to be repulsed by, that is causing these teens to feel so torn down and worthless that they take their lives. Is this REALLY what Christians believe? That you can stomp on someone until they leave this world of their own volition?
For a community that so happily asks others, “What would Jesus do?” I have just this to say. Jesus would, without a doubt in my mind, be pissed as hell that you are abusing his name and his teaching. You take his words (if he said them… the jury is still out on that one) out of context for your own personal crusade because you are too ignorant to understand something.
I’m appalled. I am outraged. I am disgusted that adults would allow these tragedies to happen… and that they would spread lies which, intentional or not, encourage others to treat the LGBT community with such hatred.
You, Ms. Anderson and Mr. Campfield, are embarrassments. You launched yourselves into positions of authority and abused your power in order to hurt others.
Tell me this, both of you, “What has a member of the LGBT community done to you to deserve your hatred?” Answer that question and then we can talk. Because, right now, you have no basis for your beliefs (yes, Campfield insists that he has documentation to back him up… all of which is outdated, misread and, in at least one case, rejected by the original author).
Please take a moment to read my roommate’s letter to Campfield in which he expresses his own plight growing up gay and how Campfield’s words directly hurt.
Featured image courtesy of Rolling Stone.
Tommy Karr 