Thursday, April 05, 2012

To My Unborn Child, If You're a 'Fag', I'll Kill You

The hatred towards gays held by many in the far right and especially among the professional Christian set and "family values" leaders is palpable. As yesterday's post on "I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay" underscored, the pain and misery that is inflicted on gay youths (actually, gays of all ages) is horrific. Especially since the Christianist views contradict not only modern medical and mental health knowledge about sexual orientation, but also I would argue Christ's Gospel message. To bring attention to the abject foulness of anti-gay hatred, a couple and their friends created a new PSA that follows up on the Twitter phenomenon of "tomyunbornchild" that afforded some the platform to say truly hate filled things about gays. Andy Towle has this:

Charlotte Moore, the creator of this new PSA, writes:

In early March, the hashtag "#tomyunbornchild" became a worldwide trend on Twitter. By and large, these tweets were loving, hopeful messages to the next generation -- but many people saw it as an opportunity to express hate speech towards LGBT children.

Reading their bile, the only thing I could think was: how would we feel if we heard actual parents saying this to actual children? I got the idea on a Thursday. By Sunday, we -- me, my boyfriend, and whatever friends we could find to help us -- had it filmed.

It's easy to dehumanize hate speech online because we've gotten so used to seeing it. We tell ourselves that it's the product of trolls, of random, anonymous strangers. Except they're not. They're real people. Many of them will be parents. And some of their children will be gay. But what can we DO about it? I don't think there are any easy answers.

Whenever you believe life begins, I hope we can all agree: life is essential, and rare, and precious. We can't stop anyone from having kids. But we can resolve to stop this toxic cycle. We can wish better for our own children. And we can support the kids who weren't so lucky.

Here's the PSA:


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