Romney's Prep School Bully Stigma And Why "Dumb Things" Doesn't Wash: A Very Personal View.

Perhaps it is Romney's youth that will 

finally belie the youthful Romney
There are certain things in a person's psyche that are harder to change than others . A feeling of superiority is one of them. And when you are bred to believe that you are superior, that feeling is almost insurmountably hard to dislodge from your mind...and your soul.

I went to a Catholic boys college prep school, and although it was not exactly the image of Pencey Prep* because it was a commuter school, it was perhaps the most elitist school in the Chicagoland area. The most elitist, the most academic...and the most macho: from our first day of freshmen year we were referred by the priests/teachers as "men." Our football and swim teams were considered among the best in the country. So many of our "men" went to Notre Dame that my going to the University of Illinois was looked upon as a humiliating apostasy. Because of its proximity to Chicago, it was certainly an upper class school for sons of the Mafioso. And with its Dominican priests, it was strict and not for the faint of heart.

Being even slightly effeminate made for four difficult years. Four VERY difficult years, in fact.

Every morning I knew that I would have a horrendous time in PE, I would upchuck breakfast. I was a "spaz". Some guys called me "Vo-Queer" instead of Vojir. I hung out with others like me - other guys who didn't completely fit in. We simply called ourselves "The Group" (before Mary McCarthy's book ever came out). By happenstance, we all came out of the closet in our mid-twenties**, but during our prep school years, we knew what "homosexuals" were, what they did sexually, and that they had relationships.

So perhaps the most disingenuous statement made by Mitt Romney after the appearance of "Lord of the Shears" is:

"I don't remember that incident," Romney told Kilmeade. "I tell you I certainly don't believe that I ... thought the fella was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s. So that was not the case.

He knew. He remembered ... and he knew. Bullies always remember their exploits: they brag about them enough to keep them fresh for a long while. They especially brag about their exploits in terms of sexuality: beating up fags is as much of a right of passage as having sex with members of the opposite sex. In extreme cases, sometimes sodomizing (gang-raping) an effeminate boy was also a right of passage. Showers and locker rooms were not always the safest places to be, especially if you had a limp wrist.


The Romney campaign has predictably back peddled with an "apology", claims of "evolution" and "dumb things." Supposedly we should all move on and look past it to a man who has a sterling character. But the portrait of Mitt Romney emerging as an insufferably arrogant, preppy kid is totally appropriate in a world that demands the birth certificate of the President.

The Bully Being Bullied

The timing of the expose couldn't have been more hazardous for the Romney campaign, coming at the heels of Romney's gay advisor Richard Grenell resigning from pressure from other bullies - the Christian Right. The boyhood "pranks" are explained away as simply the result of typical teenage angst, kind of like what waterboarding of detainees at Guantanamo is to Ann Coultergeist. The irony of the Grenell affair is that some people are sounding like bullies themselves: admittedly, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association does think much of a presidential candidate who will buckle under "yokels" like Bryan Fischer.

Another part of the portrait: some of today's bullies - the corporate kind - aren't particularly concerned about the very poor.

During the past twenty years, Mitt Romney has not physically changed - his youthful visage and energy gave the Republican Party its JFK. The portrait of a man who's temples are grey contrasting to Obama's increasingly graying hair makes a difference in politics since so much of politics is based on appearance. But it's a portrait that may change regardless of Romney's appearance. The "Lord Of The Shears" affair may start to reveal a hidden portrait - one which may turn out more like the Picture of Dorian Grey. How fitting that a story of Oscar Wilde - the most flamboyant man of his time - could serve as a metaphor for such a man.




*The school in J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye.

** I burst, nay, exploded out of the closet, eventually winding up as a go-go dancer at San Francisco's End Up in 1975, two years before Armistead Maupin's Tales of The City featured it.

The Tears Of A Bullied Boy Go Viral: But Are They Enough To Move The Bully-Enablers?

Are The Tears Fake? At This Point, Who Cares?

Just as Jamey Rodemeyer's suicide touched off a firestorm against bullying by posting his "It Gets Better" video, so too has this latest one from Jonah Mowry. He posted his video back in August, but in the past 24 hours, it has gotten over 550,000 views on YouTube, not only because it was mentioned by Perez Hilton, Joe Jervis (Joe. My. God) and Michelangelo Signorelli, but also because it was posted by thousands of viewers on the facebook pages. 


It's the kind of video that dares you not to cry along with young Jonah: he never says a word, but relates his story through music and flash cards because he's trying to summon courage while tears are streaming down his face. Some people might consider it a ploy, an almost cloying plea for attention, but they would be dismissed as heartless. Some others might consider it a put up piece - too histrionic to be real, but Jonah answered the naysayers in a follow-up video thanking people for their support. That video (Thank You Everyone - 3) unfortunately, has been removed fromYouTube by Jonah for reasons that one can only speculate, but he disclosed the fact that spammers and bullies bombarded it's posting. 


So far, Jonah's parents have not come forth with a statement about the video, provoking comments like "where's the parents in all of this?" The 14-year-old may have a good relationship with them, but so far he has not given evidence on whether or not they reported the bullying to Jonah's school. In the video, his accounts of cutting (self-mutilation) go back 8 years.   


ON ITS OWN


The video is so powerful, however, that cries of "fake" are rendered moot: Jonah's emotions are clearly raw, demonstrating that an appeal for attention is not what's at stake here: even a fictional appeal can transcend itself and result in something good. And the good that it has done is touching hearts is enough for many people. 


If it is a fake, then, it is a fake appeal as a WORK OF ART.


The outpouring of sympathy, admiration and encouragement has definitely been one-sided ... so far. Elements of America's Christian Right will need to react (positively or negatively) if they are to seem "compassionate" at all. But compassion is sometimes not their forte: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association may try to cast Jonah as the "real bully" since the teen must be considered part of the "homosexual agenda." Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has flatly stated "We're not the cause of teen suicides," belying the fact that arbiters of morality has been the cause of hundreds of millions of suicides in the last 3000 years. Yesterday, the eponymous Christian Historian David Barton declared homosexuality to be completely "unnatural". 


One might argue that pharisees have never known when to shut up and leave well enough alone.  


In a brilliant open letter to the Christian Right, John Shore of LGBTQ Nation dares them all to respond:

Tell me that your belief system didn’t help but the hot tears on this kid’s cheeks. Tell me that the bullies who torment this kid aren’t in any way encouraged or empowered by your tacit approval of their actions. Tell me that the shame this kid feels about himself has nothing to do with the shame that you believe all gay people should feel for themselves.
Tell me that you can’t comprehend the connection between your conviction that God finds homosexuals repulsive, and the fact that this kid finds himself so repulsive that he habitually cuts his own flesh.
Tell me, please, how you love this kid. Tell me how you understand his pain. Tell me how when he cries, you cry.
Tell me how you want to do everything in your power to make sure that no one, ever again, feels free to in any way victimize a young gay person.
A Christian myself, I am pleading with you to be honest with me about this.
Tell me, please, how none of this kid’s anguish has anything to do with you.
I’m listening. I really am.
We all are.

Yes, we all are waiting, but the answers to this appeal will be lame, speaking of a "love" that transcends the needs of teens and even humanity. So we are not waiting with baited breath - or even anticipated amusement - but an impending sense of ennui. We will monitor the responses (or non-responses) of:


Bryan Fischer - Tony Perkins - Pat Robertson - Michele Bachmann - Bill Donohue (Catholic anti-Defamation League) - David Barton - Linda Harvey (Mission America) - Lou Engle ("The Call") - James Dobson - Peter LaBarbera (NARTH) - and yes, Ann Coulter. Maybe Cindy Japan-is-shaped-like-a-dragon Jacobs will chime in, babbling incoherently. 


And we will have to look for the response of Jonah's parents to his sudden celebrity. Jonah has not actually mentioned any support or antagonism from his parents. Perhaps this is the most glaring omission so far, prompting many to postulate that it was a fake. 


Whatever the responses from the Right, they're sure to be virulent and definitive.

And The People Who Caused It Couldn't Care Less: Another Bully-related Teen Suicide! Ho Hum.

“I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it It would make everyone WAY more happier!”


We'll hear from the sacred cows in just a few hours (this being written at 3:00AM EDT). We'll hear how THEY would have prevented Jamey Rodemeyer's death. His parents, however, think differently: they actually worked with the school to try and stop the bullying - to no avail. Saving Jamey was almost too dauntless a task for any one entity. It would have taken a whole community to stop the bullying, and an even greater number to shore up Jamey's self-esteem. The bullying was too relentless, and it took the form of unabashed lies:

“JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!”

This is a picture of Jamey Rodemeyer:

Far from "stupid", far from "fat", far from "ugly", but not far enough from "gay"

Perhaps the stark contrast coming from this situation is with those who absolutely refuse to have any gay sensitivity awareness or real anti-bullying presentations in schools because they think that their true purpose is "indoctrination." 

From a pamphlet distributed by Family Research Council:

This pamphlet describes how pro-homosexual activists work their way up from seemingly innocent-sounding "safe schools" programs (which treat traditional values as being equivalent to racism), to one-sided "training" of teachers and students, to injecting homosexuality into every subject in the curriculum. Their final step is the active punishment of those who dare to express disapproval of homosexual behavior. This pamphlet will equip you to oppose this promotion of homosexuality in your child's school.

After reading this, it's no wonder that Tony Perkins of the FRC actually stated that his own group of "social conservatives" were not in any way responsible for teen suicides. Obliterating religion's role in suicides for the last thousand years was quite a feat ... of hysterical stupidity, but Perkins pulled it off effortlessly.
       
Bullying as a Traditional Value

Isn't it possible that in prohibiting teachers and administrators from teaching that "homosexuality is normal" that  "traditional values" zealots just as forcefully send the message that bullying is "normal"? After all, bullies have been around for millennia ... just like marriage. The harm bullies do might be considered, in fact, totally inconsequential: young teens who might consider themselves gay certainly deserve the taunting they get, and who cares if they commit suicide? ALL gays are psychologically tortured because that's part of being gay! Bullies are just being normal boys. Girls are never bullies. 

The disingenuous statement that "Of course, we're concerned about the welfare of ALL our children against bullying" will undoubtedly be bandied about this time, but this time it may seem utterly rancid: a larger effort to stop bullying in that particular school district (Jamey was not the first bully-suicide) could have at least diminished the efforts of the bullies, but through sheer thoughtlessness and lack of compassion, the bullying went unabated. This time, the school was not at fault as much as the community at large, a community perhaps fueled by righteousness: with a town that celebrates Old Home Days, it is perhaps steeped in genteel poverty (the per capita income hovers just above the poverty line) and its population of only 6,000 (97% white) supports a major Catholic church and five private Christian schools. 

Looking back at it, Jamey never had a chance.

I just wanna say good bye, disappear with no one knowing

I don't wanna live this lie, smiling to the world unknowing

I dont want you to try, you've done enough to keep me going

I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine for the very last time

Jamey Rodemeyer's life will be remembered by those who loved him:

Olivia Rinaldo, an eighth-grader at Heim Middle School, said she was drawn to his outwardly upbeat and extroverted personality. He made friends of the friendless, she said.

But his suicide will be discarded in memory by those bullies who just couldn't care less. 

Day Of Silence, Day Of Bigotry: Who Are The Victims, Who Are The Bullies?

It's somehow ironic that this year's Day of Silence falls on TAX Day. One day is looked upon as a necessary evil, while it is sad to think that the other is necessary at all. And to America's school children, it has become a day which separates the bullies and their comrades, from the victims and their friends.

It's also a day that America's moralists oppose by insisting that their children are the real victims - of indoctrination.

Keep your child from being sexually indoctrinated!!

 On this day, students participating in the "Day of Silence" will wear pro-homosexuality T-shirts, buttons, and stickers, refuse to answer teachers' questions in classrooms, make it difficult for other students to concentrate, and generally take over school campuses for the entire day.

Thousands of government high schools and increasing numbers of junior high and middle schools are allowing this propaganda throughout an entire day -- even during instructional time. The purpose of the silent civil disobedience is to promote homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality to other students throughout the entire day.

In the past, some moralists have encouraged children remaining in schools to carry a card that says this:

"True tolerance means that people with differing -- even opposing -- viewpoints can freely exchange ideas and respectfully listen to each other. It's time for an honest conversation about homosexuality. There's freedom to change if you want to. Let's talk."

Interesting. The above statement seems to indicate that a free exchange merely means telling gay teens that they can change. Knowing how virulent some of the rhetoric of moralists can be, it's doubtful that gay teens and their friends would ever be able to get a word in edgewise. 

Be that as it may, more and more groups like the Illinois Family Association and Save California are giving up on the "exchange ideas" concept and encouraging families to keep their children home from school. Other organizations opposing the Day of Silence: American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Mission America, Traditional Values Coalition, Americans for Truth and Liberty Counsel. Because of the dissemination of false information about homosexuality, some of these groups have been considered hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"We want education, not indoctrination."


So sayeth the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of Hom*phobia, Pastor Ken Hutcherson.* And as you can see from the above, "indoctrination" is now the main issue, with moralists thinking that THEY are being bullied into "acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle". Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel says "Students and staff who disagree with a radical sexualized agenda are demonized and made to feel like outsiders."


Yes, quite an ironic statement, considering that when it comes to demonizing, America's leaders of the Christian Right do it constantly and consistently. 


And yet they constantly deny any responsibility in gay teen suicides. Tony Perkins recently said that there has never been a study linking suicides to religion and society (The Christian Right). Such a disingenuous statement may elicit laughter from most people, but, as I've stated before, it only goes to show that righteous arrogance precludes reality: more than 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year and 5,000 of them are teenagers. A majority of suicides are caused by depression as a result of "not fitting in" or feeling inadequate. Such feelings have been compounded by religion and religious groups for hundreds of years. Events like Halloween "Hell Houses" make the "sinner/outcast" point so stridently that teen suicides spike at that time of year.   


Another irony in telling parents to keep their kids home: Day of Silence is voluntary to students, not matter what moralists say about schools mandating silence. But pulling a son or daughter out of school, is NOT voluntary to the students. A form of bullying is displayed by the parents: righteous bullying. Any form of "demonizing" on the part of participants in the Day Of Silence spreads to the families of the absent students. Keeping kids away from school certainly widens the gap between intolerance and acceptance. 


Bullies. Victims. Intolerance. Acceptance. This day may, more than ever, delineate the kids and families involved.


*Hutcherson is noted for a supposed "joke": "If a man ever opens a door for me, I'll tear his arm off and whip him with the wet end.

The Suicides Of Ascher, Seth and Billy: Who's To Blame - The Bullies In the Schools Or The Bullies In The Pulpits?

My thanks to Wayne Besen for pointing out these tragedies

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out expressed a sense of deep sorrow and loss as news of three gay teen suicides in September rocked the LGBT movement. In each case, the victim was a target of relentless harassment and bullying by school peers. Truth Wins Out blames the anti-gay industry and negligent school officials for creating a hostile climate that places lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students at risk for psychological abuse, violence and suicide.

Besen coined a phrase that stuck with me: "anti-gay industry." I never thought of homophobia as an industry. To me, it's been more of a movement to eradicate homosexuality and gays with what Rick Warren has retained as his motto:

"Whatever it takes."

Industry. Who profits? Well, take a look at thei industry's CEOs: Tony Perkins, Lou Engle, Scott Lively, Bryan Fischer, Franklin Graham, Harry Jackson, Pat Robertson, Rod Parsley, Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, Matt Staver, Lou Sheldon... to name a few. Each of them has a stake in the industry. If the entire nation turned around and accepted gays with open arms and equal rights would they still have jobs?

Wayne Besen is right in targeting schools in allowing bullies to flourish. Yet I think that other people have made the problem systemic: the anti-gay industry as defined by their leaders. If anyone is to be prosecuted, it's the CEOs like Engle, Perkins and Robertson. They not only abetted bullies throughout the country with their rhetoric, they 've refused to do anything about bullying, passing it off as just "kids will be kids" (kind of like Ann Coulter, when she termed waterboarding "no more than childhood hazing.").

Now, with the true scenarios being fleshed out, the fact that bullying kills is not debatable. However, Focus on the Family, differs in that IT DOES NOT CARE if gay kids commit suicide as long as other children are not affected.

Candi Cushman

Education analyst, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink:

... we’ve carefully documented how similar laws at the state level have already been used to undermine parental rights and marginalize individuals whose viewpoints are perceived as incorrect by homosexual advocacy groups

parents discovered that a “safe schools” training done at their elementary school went so far as to list “family values” and “faith systems” as “perceived obstacles.”

Here is a link to an Anderson Cooper 360 debate about the subject featuring Cushman (it's about 10 minutes long, but really worth it). Eliza Byard of GLSEN and author Rosalind Wiseman shine bright in their professional assertions concerning bullying kids who are perceived as gay, while Cushman waxes disingenuously about FOF wanting to protect "all" children, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation.  And if you watch the video below, you'll see the same fawning concern spew out "who cares if your fag kids commit suicide, just keep your fag hands off our kids."  

OK, not quite in those terms, but you get the picture.

Tony Perkins and his Family Research Council are now spearheading a campaign to stop passage of the bill Safe School Improvement Act which would aim to prevent bullying by providing sensitivity traning. They see it as a way for homosexuality to be considered a lergitimate lifestyle and a way for homosexuals to "recruit" kids. They also fear that anti-Christian sentiments will be imbued. 

They certainly don't have in mind kids like Seth, Billy and Ascher. Their deaths were mere hindrances to stopping the bill. Remember how much they campaigned against the Matthew Shepard Act. Homophobe Virginia Foxx looked the fool as she insulted Matt' s mother on the floor of the House. 

"Whatever it takes"

They will not be swayed by the accounts of bullying, either:

The bullying of [Ascher] Brown allegedly went on for over two years, and escalated the day before his suicide when he was pushed down a flight of stairs and had his book bag kicked open.

"Whatever it takes"

The two videos below will show you the results of bullying and Focus on The Family's take on the proposed bill. Let me know what you think. Candi lives up to her name - sugar-coating FOF's homophobia and glossing over the bullying that leads to teen suicides. 

I realize that it may be extreme to say that campaigning against the SAFE SCHOOLS IMPROVEMENT ACT is another form of "Kill A Queer For Christ," but the fact remains that these people care nothing about the teen suicides that have occurred.

Focus on the Family has tried to discredit GLSEN's efforts to make schools safe for all students since our founding in 1990. These most recent attempts show that, once again, Focus on the Family either doesn't know what it is talking about or simply don't care about addressing bullying, or both.

...In terms of LGBT youth, we certainly hope that Focus on the Family agrees that the current environment in which nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experience harassment each year in school is simply unacceptable. But we won't hold our breath.

In the interest of protecting gay teens and any teens who are ostracized by kids in school who see them as "different" and therefore worthy of contempt and physical harm, I am now urging everyone to support passage of The Safe School Improvement Act. Show your support by blogging, writing, networking, calling everyone about the bill. U.S. Senator Bob Casey responsible for it. Contact him with your support. Remember:

Whatever it takes