Bullies are always losers...no matter what the reason may be

And those who beat up gay kids (or adults) deserve a special place in Hell

I don't hate you…I just don't like that you exist

- Gena Showalter, Seduce the Darkness

Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.

- Kofi Annan

Remember the good old days? When you kick someone’s ass because you didn’t like them and no one said or did anything?

Yeah, I remember those days well—because I lived through them. When my family lived in Walker, MN, I was bullied in junior high school because I had buck teeth. It was miserable and relentless, and the adults around me did precisely nothing to protect me or stop the bullying. Perhaps they didn’t care or didn’t think it was their business. Maybe they felt it would toughen me up. Or perhaps they thought I deserved it. Who knows?

To those adults who knew what was going on, and there were a lot of them because the bullying didn’t happen in dark corners or back alleys- FUCK YOU for not lending a hand to a scared 13/14-year-old kid who was set upon by several kids and never had a fair shot. Sometimes, there were four, five, six, or more arrayed against me- enough so I had no opportunity to defend myself.

I chose not to fight back because I knew that would only make things worse, but also because I didn’t believe in fighting. I’ve been in two fights, both in 5th grade. I lost both and retired on the spot, leaving my lifetime record at 0-2. I decided then and there that it took a bigger man to walk away from a fight, so whenever the opportunity presented itself, I’d look my adversary in the eye, turn on my heels, and walk away.

The jeers and catcalls never bothered me. I knew the cheap, personal insults would only hurt as much as I chose to take them on, so I ignored them. It made me a bit of a loner at times, but before long, other kids stopped picking fights with me because I took the fun out of it for them.

Bullies depend on getting a reaction. Deny them that, and their raison d’etre ceases to exist. I refused to react. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t speak to them. I didn’t even acknowledge their existence because, for me, they DIDN’T exist.

I took out my aggression on the football field or the basketball court. I felt safe there. There were rules and penalties for breaking them. I knew what I could and couldn’t do. When I stepped between the lines, I could become something and someone else—to a point, and I often had both feet halfway over that line.

But never entirely over it.

Sometimes, my bullies were my teammates. We participated in sports together and suspended hostilities for games against other schools, but practices were another story. As a point guard on the basketball court, I could drive the lane, deliver a sharp elbow to the side of someone’s head or a knee to an undefended region, and walk away while trying to suppress a smile.

Fuck you very much, asshole. How do you like me now? That doesn’t feel so good, does it?

As a quarterback, I could drop back, pretend I had nowhere to throw, and take the ball up the middle. I’d drop my head and drive my helmet into a linebacker’s chest. As he took me down, I’d use my helmet to drive his body into the ground. If I did it right, I could hear the air rushing from his lungs, and it would be a couple of minutes before he could get up.

Yeah, I could be kind of an asshole that way—and no, I don’t regret it. Not for a moment. I used the situation to my advantage, and they couldn’t stop me.

Sure, they got a few whacks in on me, as well, but there were rules we had to stay within, and it was mano a mano, not a group of fucking asshat cowards ganging up on me in a school hallway because they were too scared to do it alone.

We moved away from Walker after my freshman year in high school, and thankfully, bullying was never an issue for me in my new school in St. Cloud.

Because of my own experiences, though, I’ve always been very sensitive about bullying, so when I heard about these jackasses who were longing for the days when you could beat up gay people “just because,” it made my blood boil.

Vincent James, an unapologetic racist, antisemite, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and fascist who currently serves as the treasurer of white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ America First organization, appeared on the bigoted Christian nationalist program “CrossTalk” last night, which is hosted by racist conspiracy theorists Edward Szall and Lauren Witzke.

During the course of the program, the three complained that gay people are infiltrating the conservative movement as part of an effort to weaken and ultimately dismantle it.

The discussion prompted Szall, who is virulently anti-gay, to assert that gay people having children should not be tolerated, for the good of the children.

“There used to be a day and age,” Szall said, “[when] it was just bad for the kid. When you think about the kid in the situation; we beat up the kid at school who had two dads. And we weren’t jerks for that, that’s just what we did.”

Yeah, remember the days when we could teach kids to hate the gays and queers, and they could beat them up without getting into trouble? ‘Cuz that’s just what we did in those days, don’tchaknow?

Ah, the good ol’ days? Weren’t they great? We could bust the skulls of a few queers and feel like we were doing a good thing?

James, who has openly declared that he would love to live in a society where gay people are thrown off of buildings and have their children kidnapped by government task forces, agreed, saying that when he was younger, kids who were “obviously gay … pretended not to be gay” in order to avoid being bullied and beaten up.

I remember those days—and they weren’t so great. Friends who happened to be gay had to be cautious because they never knew when or if they’d be attacked and beaten. Even in college, friends I knew to be gay didn’t come out because they didn’t feel safe doing so. It was the early ‘80s, and there wasn’t nearly as much acceptance of (and positivity about) the LGBTQ community as there is today.

Those were the good ol’ days? Not nearly.

That is how society should be today, concurred Witzke, who is currently being sued by a gay couple whom she baselessly accused of being pedophiles.

“That is how we kind of maintained the line as far as behavior,” Witzke said. “I think that they all need to go back in the closet.”

No. NO. If anyone needs to go back into the closet, it’s hateful, self-righteous, homophobic assholes like Lauren Witzke, who adds little positive value to this world.

There’s nothing that makes White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals inherently superior to the LGBTQ community, except perhaps for overwhelming numerical superiority.

People like James, Witzke, and Szall are hateful homophobes who can’t bring themselves to acknowledge, much less understand, that not everyone lives and sees the world as they do. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t make a person evil or worthy of being beaten. It just means they’re wired differently.

And being LGBTQ has NOTHING whatsoever to do with pedophilia. Boatloads of research have shown that most pedophiles are—GASP!!!—White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals.

Sorry, y’all; the truth hurts, but it is what it is. You can’t ignore it. You can’t even paper it over. Most pedophiles are White Conservative Christian Cisgender Males who may or may not be heterosexual.

This sort of unmitigated bigotry is a standard part of the “CrossTalk” program, but as Right Wing Watch reported last year, that has not prevented Republican officials, including Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, from appearing on the program.

This ignorant self-superiority is hardly surprising. Hatred and homophobia are unspoken planks in the GOP platform. James, Witzke, and Szall are simply giving voice to what mainstream Republicans often won’t talk about for fear of being rightfully condemned by the mainstream press and decent Americans.

These folks claim to be Christians, but they couldn’t model Christian love and charity if the Prince of Peace himself showed up disguised as a tour guide.

They’re so swept up in their smug arrogance and unwarranted self-superiority that they can’t recognize what genuinely awful examples of humanity they are…and they’re truly, deeply shitty human beings.

Good people don’t beat up others simply because of who they are and/or who they love. They don’t feel entitled to maintain “the lines as far as behavior is concerned.” They don’t bestow upon themselves the right to determine what sort of love is appropriate or inappropriate. Instead, they focus on getting and keeping their own houses in order.

Good people lift up those targeted for abuse by people like Witzke, James, and Szall, who deserve to have reserved parking spaces waiting for them in (the) Hell (I don’t believe in).

They deserve to have someone lighting fires under their sorry asses for eternity, don’tchathink? Or perhaps they should be forced to use branding irons as butt plugs? I could get behind that idea.

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