Fuck Your Feelings, Christian!

 by Terry Dean Bartlett on Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 4:19pm

Gay Kids Are Dying, Fuck Your Feelings

October 14, 2010

Dear Dan:  I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened and frustrated with your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man who took his own life.

If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)? There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to that young man, and I know for a fact that is true of many other people who disagree with your viewpoint.

To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my children to mock, hurt, or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Christ is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of a savior. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people.

Please consider your viewpoint, and please be more careful with your words in the future.

—L.R.

Savage:

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: Fuck your feelings.

A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying.

Why the hell not?

Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.

And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbianchildren.

Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to Mom and Dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh—day-in, day-out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call Mom and Dad.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=5135029%EF%BB%BF



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An Invitation to Harmony

On my altar stands an auspicious statue of Buddha and in his left hand I've placed a small card that reads a single word: HARMONY. Standing upright, and with a poised expression on his face, he reminds me of a still- standing driver in the middle of a crowded airport, with a single-worded sign bearing the name of he or she for whom he waits.

"HARMONY"

As of late, meaning the last few years, my life  has not always been harmonious. I have definitely had lot's of fun and met some interesting people.  I've taken drugs celebrating the bastardization of two otherwise entirely innocent words: "party and play." And, as if somehow handed over by the Enlightened One himself, I've ingested drugs which promised and provided, though very briefly, ecstasy.

 But have I had  harmony in my life? Not so much.

I had that unexpected date with South Salt Lake Police and a child's school expulsion for drug use and that weird fling with the guy who said "I think I love you, now I just gotta get to know you" . And, in effort to somehow restore balance, there were the 12-step meetings, band-aid relationships, mega doses of vitamins and copious amounts of chocolate. But--and I'm sure you know what's coming here--of harmony, there wasn't much.

Yet, strangely, through all that, Buddha has remained, unscathed, holding a small invitation to a place that often felt worlds away: HARMONY.

What lesson is there for me from a still-standing statue holding a sign? Buddha said that he taught the Dharma, and once in a while he used words to do it. Surrounded at times by chaos, his silent stillness reminds me that harmony is not a place, but, rather a condition and to BE in a harmonious state I ought to stop looking for it. The act of looking for something, whether my house keys or state of well-being, is always hindered by knowledge that I don't have it. In one of my favorite episodes of Family Guy, Peter put a Twinkie on the end of a string, tied to stick which kept it just out of Chris's reach. The pursuit of said Twinkie kept the poor running, arms flailing, in circles. That's often how I have felt searching for a state of harmony placed just out of arms reach.

Thankfully, I'm starting to see things differently.Recently I had tea with a good friend who became the unsuspecting recipient of a lamentation about my daughter. I felt deeply troubled because she had made choices I didn't agree with. Sensing my upset, my friend put her hand on my arm, and, interrupting my  monologue asked "removing yourself from both past and future, what really is the problem?" It was obvious. There was none.Viewing the situation from the present moment, rather than chasing the resolution (that "Twinkie" suspended from a string) driven by fear, created a shift in perspective. I found a bit of harmony when confronted with fear regarding the well-being of my child, fears that, over the years, I had used to justify abusive self-criticism, obsession over things I could not control, and, eventually, drug use.

Shifting my perspective toward recovery allows me to step into sobriety--and serenity--one day at a time. Wanting that ever elusive cure, the ability to say I'm all healed up from my addiction, is overwhelming enough to reproduce similar anxieties to those described above. I'm clean and sober today; yesterday resides only in short-term memory and tomorrow only in my imagination.

My life is different today. There is a stronger sense of balance between my inner experience and the external environment. I appreciate chaos because it makes the stepping away from it much more fun. Today, harmony   doesn't feel like a place to arrive at, rather, just a way to make the journey a meaningful one.