Well. THAT went well.

[captainsblog]

The United States of America, land of opportunity and exceptionalism, celebrated its first day yesterday with its military able to openly accept servicemen and women of all sexual orientations.

In greater Boston, the people celebrated by ripping down an LGBT flag outside a Unitarian church. (This isn't yours, is it, liddle_oldman? Or is yours the one they mention in Watertown, which had its  flag ripped down and torched two years ago?)

And closer to our home (one district over from where we live), a brutally bullied young man, two weeks into his high school career, killed himself.

Meanwhile, there was no great reaction from the pack of rats scurrying to take over the country 14 months from now. Instead, we have to rely on their past statements to know how they feel.

How about you, famed pray-away-the-gayer Michele Bachmann?

In 2006, Bachmann told the Minnesota state legislature that passing an anti-bullying bill would be a waste of time.

    I think for all of us, our experience in public schools is there have always been bullies. … Always have been, always will be. I just don’t know how we’re ever going to get to the point of zero tolerance. … What does it mean. … Will we be expecting boys to be girls?

Sigh.

We have to do better than "It gets better." We have to help MAKE it better. Call out the bullies when they first start showing those tendencies, and teach them love and acceptance even if it means they're in timeout or worse, even if it's our own Little Darling Special Snowflake little boy. (Or girl- they can be just as mean and intolerant.)

And for God's sake, people, vote. Because we're dealing with a political enemy which (as a recent metaquoter put it and as I've thought myself many times in recent years) thinks that The Handmaid's Tale is a how-to manual. 

Comments

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

Dude, girls are WAY nastier bullies than boys are. They're meaner, they're sneakier, and they're more likely to be getting abused at home already, which is where bullying tendencies come from in the first place. In my high school, I was never once pushed around by a boy, but the girls made the place sheer hell for me on a regular basis.

MEAN Girls.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I agree. I was picked on by one particular girl in high school, & she made my life seven levels of Hell ('til I decked her, but that's another story).

[firynze.livejournal.com]

And yet, yesterday in Vermont, a Naval officer married his sweetie of 11 years...

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Well, YOU guys are practically Canadian. Ever since that whole Champlain-is-a-Great-Lake business, you're basically the Great White North only with more cows.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Hey, there are plenty of cows in Quebec.

[bktheirregular]

Three parts The Handmaid's Tale, one part The Swan, with more than a sprinkling of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

"Always have been, always will be." I bet there were more than a few people who said the same thing about lynchings.

And people who use schoolyard-bully tactics and strategies when they pass into adulthood? (Because there are all too many people guilty of that, from the current President's predecessor to a bunch of people in the halls of power anywhere you look...)

Maybe they can claim citizenship, but they don't get to claim human-being priviliges. Not in my book, anyway.

Seriously, some of those ... schoolyard bullies (and you have to imagine those words being said in a tone of voice suited to "cannibal rapist" or "clerical pederast") need to learn what it feels like to be on the wrong side of that abuse. But how do you make a sociopath aware of the pain inflicted on someone else?

[nentikobe.livejournal.com]

Three parts The Handmaid's Tale, one part The Swan, with more than a sprinkling of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I'd say its a cupful, with au jous.

Great comment though, I wanted to agree.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

I'm in the Quincy church. (United First Parish -- ufpc.org)

We just put up another flag when one is torn down. We have plenty. Social justice often takes a while.

I have occasional nightmares about these people's bookshelves, with The Handmaiden's Tale and Atlas Shrugged going at it furiously.

[floundah.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry about the young man who killed himself. People can be so cruel. We really do have to make things better, rather than just give lip service to it. Agree with you about everything in this post. There are no words for the kind of bad shit that's going on in this country.

...

The church in that picture is in the middle of "liberal" Harvard Square.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

Great post, buddy. Your last 2 paragraphs really resonated with me.