A Rolling Stone article from February has been doing the rounds – and should carry many big, clear trigger warnings for suicide, self-harm, homophobia, and hate speech (reported).  This post on its contents likewise.

It’s entitled “One Town’s War on Gay Teens“, and it was a bit of an eye-opener to me.

It certainly wasn’t a revelation to me that there are truly hateful people in this world, that bullies get away with horrific abuse, that people are honestly so afraid of pointing out that there are a lot of self-proclaimed Christians in this world whom Jesus would absolutely tear strips off that they let them get away with encoding prejudice and bigotry into our society and schools and communities.

The revelation was this:  I really haven’t taken my gloves off with these people, and I need to.

Despite being a shrieking swearing ranty bitchy PMS-ing monster truck of feminist blogging, I do moderate myself (you may pause to snort, if you will.)  I do refrain from Jesus-would-slap-the-shit-out-of-you comments like the above.  I do have this niggling little part of my brain that says there’s a line I shouldn’t cross, a line about faith and how people define their own, a line between pointing out the hypocrisy and horrific consequences without pointing too hard at the person behind them.  Just as I’ve always objected to cheap shots about Gerry Brownlee’s weight or Cameron Slater’s mental health, I’ve felt that telling a person that it’s not their belief system that’s evil, it’s actually them, was … cheap.  Dirty.  Unbecoming.  Something like that.

And then I read that Rolling Stone article.  And while yes, like I’ve said, it wasn’t a surprise to me that fundy wankers have attempted to eradicate the existence of homosexuality from their communities (perhaps I should say, the communities burdened with their residence) and it wasn’t a surprise to me that this had caused some kids to take their own lives, something broke in my brain.  Something clicked together.  Something aligned, possibly the stars, and I realised in that moment a sad, terrible, huge, but ultimately truthy truth:

You fuckers are just, simply, fucking evil and if there is a Hell it will be too fucking good for you.

You shat on these kids.

You didn’t even tell them they, personally, were evil – you didn’t have to.  You just removed any option they had of figuring out the world for themselves, because in your heads “choice” is just fine and dandy as long as the choices presented are all fundy-Christian-approved ones.

You let them get beaten up and harassed, and you threatened the adults in the best position to protect them with the loss of their job, maybe their career, if they dared to stop it.

You demonised the people who actually understand what compassion means and could have saved these kids.

In the wake of the suicides, the fundy asshats blame gay rights groups for the suicides.  Because apparently telling kids that their feelings were valid “locked them” into a “lifestyle” etc etc.

Not, “telling kids their feelings were invalid and letting bullies attack them at their most vulnerable with no reprieve or protection from authority figures.”  Not, “denying children even the acknowledgement of homosexuality by letting them know there was a policy outlawing acknowledgement of homosexuality.”

You trapped teenagers in a world where they could not even examine their feelings, much less acknowledge them, much less talk about them with anyone because you created a culture which made saying “I think I like people of my own gender” basically the equivalent of “I come from Mars and have acid for blood” and you fucking dare to say that homosexuality gave them no fucking options?

You actually think bullying is okay.

Michele Bachmann has a great point when she says bullying is wrong.

It’s only slightly ruined by the fact she said it to cover her ass after arguing that shutting down bullying was basically the end of free speech (ironic!) and would inevitably lead to “boys [being] girls”.

Because bullying isn’t wrong, apparently.  Well, it is, it’s just that beating up a small, quiet guy for not being sufficiently manly isn’t really bullying, and constantly harassing a girl for wearing baggy sweatshirts isn’t either.  They’re just basic social correction, bringing the deviants back into line so nothing threatens the established hetero social order.  And those schoolyard bullies learnt it from you.

Let me tell you, people:  Jesus was all about eliminating people’s differences and trampling on their individuality.  Fo sho.

You are utter fucking hypocrites.

For people who think sex is a robotic process which married hetero cis couples should only ever engage in for the purposes of bring more little schoolyard thugs into the world, you are seriously fucking obsessed with sex, and “deviant” forms of it in particular.

Labelling Gay Straight Alliance clubs as “sex clubs”?  I’d say “are you fucking high” but let’s remember:  you’re not honest people.  You’re not sincere.  You’re half-driven to distraction by a lifetime of denying basic sexual urges, half-making shit up to scare the people who aren’t as evil as you but also aren’t particularly political, particularly engaged with broader social issues, who are susceptible to the bullshit you spin because you’re a Pillar of the Community.

You are, in fact, fucking evil.

You are entirely willing to destroy people’s lives if it maintains the dominance of your belief system.  You will do whatever it takes to keep other people, other ideas, other ways of living in the shadows and bullying teens to the point of suicide is pretty much just hunky-fucking dory to you.

I do not believe that fundy shitstains actually think gayness is a choice.  I do not believe they think it’s a genetic mutation.  I think they do not care.  It’s a threat to their natural order, so say and do whatever it takes to get rid of it, right?

Demonise teenagers.  Pretend to be acting in their best interests when you say “oh, but they’re so confused at that age” with one Jesus-shaped sock puppet but scream “they’re evil and trying to destroy us!” with the other.  Play on your fucked-up narrow-minded cultural paranoia, primed through decades of Yellow Peril and Red Peril and War on Terror, and turn it against your children because you’d actually prefer to see them dead than gay and at peace with themselves.

Fuck drawing lines in the sand with you cretins.  There is blood on your hands.  Your “faith” and behaviour bears absolutely zero relationship to the shit Jesus actually preached (gayness and abortion: not actually his favourite topics.)

But do you even have the faith you claim?  I’m in serious doubt here.  If you’d been born in any other country or time, would you just be the same hateful, demonic little fucks, waving whatever religion of convenience, whatever writings of whatever prophet, you could find to justify your self-centred bigotry?

You are fucking evil.  And I’m pretty much decided right here right now that it is my life’s goal to fucking destroy you.

~A note to you other fuckers out there~

If you have read that Rolling Stone article, and you side with those people, and it offends you that I feel entirely justified in labelling those “Christians” as absolutely unmitigatedly evil people?  You can go fuck yourself, because kids are dead and your buddies over there caused it.