The Body Electric: Dear Bigots, Stop Having Children (A Rant)

 Dear Bigot Parents:

Note that I won't call you "intolerant" because I don't think it's about "tolerance." Nobody needs to be tolerated. What needs to happen is you need to get your heads out of your asses and appreciate the rich diversity of life that exists around you. I know you don't like rich diversity, and whatever dumb reason you have to justify that--the bible tells you so (though, of course, it doesn't), your "right" to your own "beliefs," your "values," whatever--the claws really come out when there is a threat to your right to brainwash your babies into bigotry, too. I know, I know--your children must be protected! Here's the deal: your ignorance is not an excuse for the violence it causes. And I've had it with your bullshit. Your children must be protected, you're right--God save them from you.

So, what am I so pissed off about it? I mean, beyond the likelihood that you are the same people hell bent on preventing me from enjoying equal civil rights under the law in my partnership to the woman I have been with for five years? What's really got me mad is your reaction to the efforts of Frameline and the Gay Straight Alliance to do something that will likely save the lives and hearts of many (your own child, perhaps, among them).

Frameline and the Gay Straight Alliance have recently lauched a collaborative project called Youth in Motion-- which offers free educational videos to schools throughout California designed to educate young people about queer issues (including the spectrum of genders that is an obvious aspect of daily life, though I do understand that the head-in-the-ass perspective is limiting for you). 250 schools have already signed up, and you can check out the curriculum (which includes discussion questions like "What happens to people who don't conform to society's expectations with regard to gender and sexuality? What are they called? How are they treated?") on their website. The videos include an examination of the Native American Two Spirit people, an animated short about a boy finding the courage to wear a bikini and be himself, a father's poignant story of accepting his transgender daughter, and a story of a tomboy who goes on to become a basketball star.

SCARY!

(If you want a primer on the argument against showing these videos in school, check out this obnoxious article that justifies the homophobia pretty latently here but for the blatant stuff, go ahead and check out this conservative advocacy group's campaign).

I find you offensive. I think your "right" to pull your child from the classroom during the showing of these videos is a travesty, and your objections to the video being shown at all makes you an accomplice to hate. You know whose rights I'm thinking about? I'm thinking about Lawrence King, the gay eighth grader from Oxnard (in this great state of California, by the way) who was shot dead by a classmate in February. A recent New York Times article quoted Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, as noting that the fourteen-year-old shooter "is just as much a victim as Lawrence. He's a victim of homophobia and hate.'"

Whose homophobia and hate, you ask? Why, yours!

How about this? If you don't like the world you live in and if you insist on your right to be toxic, move out to the middle of nowhere with a bunch of other yahoos. You can sit around all day, bathing in your homogenous, hateful righteousness. Just keep yourself away from the general public--and quit reproducing. The next generation will be so much better for it.

Yours sincerely,

Page McBee