Focus on blind rage

[drwex]

This URL came across on a humor list I frequent:
http://www.focusonyourchild.com/develop/art1/A0000684.html

My reaction wasn't "aren't those fundamentalists funny" but rather "I will now reach out and choke the life out of anyone who messes up their children with this crap." I mean like I want to feel this jerk's windpipe slowly crush under my fingers as his eyes (because I know it was a guy) bug out. It was a bit startling to experience that reaction.

I guess it's part of becoming a parent. I am watching my own children play around with gender, roles, and identity. I and they know other kids who wear whatever clothes they please, have hair whatever length they please, and often they're able to identify and freely express their emotions. Sometimes they roughhouse and other times they don't like it and would rather sit and make pretty pictures. THIS IS GOOD! Hello? Important! DO NOT MESS THIS UP, YOU NARROW-MINDED FRIGHTENED DOGMATISTS! Most especially don't get your crap on my kids.

Sometimes the heterosexual agenda depresses me. Today's flavor, I think, is barely suppressed fury.

Comments

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should not read that, or I will go intot he kind of blind rage that scares the co-workers.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

I was right. THat's blind rage. I'll be over here, trying not to hit things.

[drwex]

*hugs* sorry. I strongly suggest you don't follow some of the links off that page.

For those not quite getting it, the url site "focusonyourchild.com" appears to be a production of Focus on the Family, an invidious promoter of the heterosexual agenda.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

I wasn't planning on it. But occasionally it's good to focus the rage.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Just reading the subject lines of the other links has me fuming. I had to stop. I didn't want to see what they thought. I'm so mad I can't even get my thoughts in order to type or think what I'd like to do.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Wait, this came across a HUMOR list? I hope you posted to the list that this was NOT FUNNY.

[skreeky]

The funny version of this decidedly non-funny point of view is the film "But I'm a Cheerleader!" I highly recommend it. Basically, the girl's parents do an Intervention because they think she might have lesbian tendencies. She really doesn't think she does (hilarity ensues), but they send her to a camp for "sexually confused" teens where she meets up with a lot of wonderful dykes (hilarity ensues) and discovers that they're pretty appealing after all (hilarity ensues). Her parents have managed to bring out in her exactly what they feared, when if they'd not pushed the point she might have just gone with the mainstream flow and never have discovered her own real preference.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I loved that movie. I mean, it had RuPaul as a BOY. :)

[unseelie.livejournal.com]

i skimmed a few bits
until my eyes refused to read anymore and my brain shut off.

thank goddess i had that sort of filter installed.

wow.

i am speechless.
i really am. wow. just.
shocked and awed.

Eh.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I'm not blinded by rage.

In fact, I'm not feeling any rage at all.

When these peoples' stand is so obviously ignorant and divorced from the facts (with a few exceptions, such as the notion that "homosexuality is rarely if ever chosen"), I can't give it any credence.

And hey, if the predominant result is that they keep their kids away from known pedophiles in their families, some good may come of it.

Re: Eh.

[c1.livejournal.com]

I agree and yet disagree.
Yes, these people are peddling the worst kind of ignorance.
But it's important to respond.
Scientists decided to take a tack of non-involvement WRT "intelligent design." We've seen that the Kansas Board of Education has viewed this silence as an endorsement of intelligent design.
By not standing up and calling these idiots to task for their fallacies, the interpretation is "well, I don't have a good rebuttal, so you must be right."

Re: Eh.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I'd hardly call the shouting matches at the Kansas Board of Education "silent endorsement". Yes, it's a travesty that the superstitious nutballs have gotten as far as they have, but it's not like they got there without opposition.

I see not much use in taking these people on head-to-head. Instead, we fight for recognition of the rights of people who are being denied them, and we bitch-slap these ignorami when they actively get in the way of others.

And, as I mentioned elsewhere, if they raise their children to bully those they perceive are "gay", come down on them with large hammers.

[tigira.livejournal.com]

GAH!!!!!
They'd better not come anywhere near my son!

Fury is an understatement.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Oh, quite right. My blase attitude is based on the notion that they're screwing up their own families; if any of their children bully any of my children because "gay kids deserve to be bullied", they'd better hope the arresting officers show up at their house before I do.

[coraline]

i would think you would know enough people who have escaped from families which consist of intolerant fundamentalists to have some pity for the children of such families, who might grow up to be worthwhile people some day.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I know one person (off the top of my head) who has escaped from a fundamentalist family. She has since reconciled with her family. Is that "enough"?

Yes, I do pity the children of such families (if my sample of one counts), and have put "them" up in my home for extended periods. And she is, without a doubt, a worthwhile person.

I probably know more people who have escaped from such intolerant families, but I don't know their backgrounds, so I didn't count them in my total.

[nchanter.livejournal.com]

Let me just say that I had a psyche evaluation done when i was... 16? And part of the write up included my mother's discussion of my childhood, and the fact that i didn't fit into normal gender roles was considered a "problem" I like playing with cars and the color blue and didn't like to play "mommy." My mother tried to re-inforce the gender-roles stuff and I guess it worked. But I was always really pissed that she never bought me matchbox cars and my barbies rarely wore the pink clothes and mostly wore the pants outfits i had for them.

I also use to excell at math and science and sucked at the liberal arts. Somewhere in there I actually became a girl. I'm quilting these days for goddesses sake.

But yea, the right sucks. And kids should be allowed to play with whatever they want. Boys should be allowed to play with dolls and have tea parties and I should have been allowed to get a dumptruck, god damn it!

[taura-g.livejournal.com]

ARGH!!!!

This is the same narrow-minded B*llsh*t that A's Mom is giving to his transgender sibling. It pisses me off to all extremes. As if it isn't confusing enough trying to figure out what you are (sexually or otherwise) you have to deal with this kind of reactionary BS coming out of your parents. As if love is conditional.

Kill them all and let God sort it out.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Ugh, this is horrid. It's so sad to think of children growing up like that, being told that who they are is simply unacceptable. :(

And "effeminate thinking"? What the fuck does that even mean?

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

Not gonna read that. Nope. Already wanna strangle 'em.
See, this is why I don't even read news anymore.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I saw something today that pleased me and I think you will find it pleasing too so I'll share.

I was out running errands this morning and I passed, on the side of the road, three children playing. One girl and two boys, they had three doll carriages with dolls in them. One of the little boys was tucking a blanket in around the doll in his carriage. I probably wouldn't have even taken any notice other than "oh three kids playing on the sidewalk" but I stopped at the street corner near them for traffic and watched them for a few minutes before I realized that it was little boys playing with dolls with the little girl. My first response was "cool." I guess my point is that their parents (which are likely mainstream) are not listening to the fundamentalists, I take heart that few people actually do. Unfortunately those few have the loud voices.

I really like my neighborhood, I'll miss it when we have to finally move. It's so diverse and accepting. We have all many nationalities and many religions represented. The three children playing were Hispanic, we have two Asian families that live across the street, my landpeople and neighbors are from Greece, And on the other side are from Russia. We have a group of Nuns who live nearby, a family of Sikh (sikhs?) and a household of Tibetan Monks in the neighborhood.

Anyway, it seems that those who are the most vocal are the ones who get all the press. And the fundamentalists tend to be rather vocal when it comes to pushing their adgenda. The squeeky wheel gets the grease.

Children learn from what they are exposed to. Your children have such an open minded and accepting social circle surrounding them, that that is what they will learn.

[c1.livejournal.com]

How often do the folks in your neighborhood get together and do something as a group, where all of you can interact and learn from each other?
(Straightforward question, no fingers being pointed.)

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

How often do the folks in your neighborhood get together and do something as a group, where all of you can interact and learn from each other?

Knee-jerk reaction: Ewww!

Quote-file reaction: "Geography is no basis for community"

Introspective reaction: I have never understood some peoples' desire to do such things.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Not very often. Usually when it snows and we are all out shoveling out parking spaces and driveways, we chit chat. But people are busy with their own lives. Usually it's a wave or hello in passing, But there is no social circle that we are associated with, if there is otherwise, I don't know about it.

[dpolicar]

I find it more depressing than infuriating, but I know whereof you speak.

(By way of cauley's friends page)

[gamehawk.livejournal.com]

If it helps any, this has been making the rounds, and getting soundly mocked, in the Christian blogosphere (or at least the segment I follow).

It's been bumped by other, even more boneheaded, statements from a different public Christian (I'm tempted to scare-quote that) figure that I'm too embarrassed to even name. Sigh.

(Okay, that probably *didn't* help...)