It may be tough, but it isn't love
Some of you may already know about Zach, the 16-year-old gay youth who came out to his Christian fundamentalist parents a few months ago. Zach is currently incarcerated at “Refuge,” an anti-gay “conversion” camp run by a fundie group called, ironically enough, Love in Action. John Smid, the director of Love in Action, previously said this to another gay youth who resisted his programming:
"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle.”
Gene Stone, in “The Right Is Killing Us,” laments the conservative campaign of misinformation about homosexuality. He notes that:
The right wing’s relentless propaganda machine has a pernicious effect throughout society. Not only does it remind gays how much they’re hated by a segment of the population, it helps convince parents who don’t know much about homosexuality that it’s evil, a perversion, something that no family could possible want in its midst. When people are exposed only to the hateful bigotry of the right, what’s the result? When taken to the extreme, infanticide -- as the Tampa case reveals.
The “Tampa case” he mentions is that of a Florida man who was so afraid that his three-year-old son might be gay that he killed him. Details of how the father repeatedly slapped his son and slammed him against the wall are also here:
Even though the boy would shake and wet himself, his father, Ronnie Paris Jr., would box with the 3-year-old, slapping him in the head until he cried because he didn't want his son to grow up to be “a sissy,” the boy's mother testified Monday.Others corroborated Nysheerah Paris' testimony as the prosecution built its case during the first day of the capital murder trial of Ronnie Paris Jr., 21, accused of abusing 3-year- old Ronnie Paris until the boy slipped into a coma Jan. 22.
He died six days later with swelling on both sides of his brain.
“He was trying to teach him how to fight,” said Shanita Powell, Nysheerah Paris' sister. “He was concerned that the child might be gay.”
The people who want gays and lesbians dead are not mere hyperbole, or figments of liberal imaginations; they are reality. They may speak words of love in public, but their actions reveal the hatred simmering underneath. They often call their militantly bigoted mentality “tough love,” after the resolve used by the families of substance abusers.
It may be tough, but it isn’t love.
UPDATE (18 JUL 2005 3:55PM): Mark Benjamin of Slate started a four-part series today titled “Turning off Gays” that examines the “ex-gay” movement. I’m eagerly awaiting the remaining three parts.