Anti-Gay Bullies Start A Month-Long Web Smackdown. Do Your Part To End Gay Bullying!

There has certainly been a lot of anti-gay bullying going on this month. Here’s just a few of the lowlights:
– Four young men from Bishop Eddie Long’s mega-huge New Birth Missionary Baptist Church have come forth saying that the anti-gay religious leader coerced them to blow him in exchange for “commitment gifts” like cars, jewelry, and trips to expensive hotels. He responded to the accusations from the pulpit last Sunday saying that he’d combat them like David to their Goliath. So… the rich powerful bishop is David and the poor molested young men are Goliath? OK…
– Rapper 50 Cent tweets that any grown man over age 25 who doesn’t like eating pussy should kill themselves. He then explained that he wasn’t being homophobic because he has a bisexual mom and he said LOL. Most likely gay actor Zachary Quinto responded asking 50cent to “spread hope not hate.”
– Then, six gay teens did kill themselves (thanks, 50 Cent) including one who had his gay sex webcast by his shithead roommate.
– The Assistant Attorney General of Michigan Andrew Shirvell has spent his free time harassing the openly gay University of Michigan Student Body President Chris Armstrong on his blog calling Armstrong “a gay nazi”, “Satan’s representative on earth”, and harassing his friends and family on Facebook. Armstrong filed for a restraining order against Shrivell and although Shirvell’s boss Michigan State Attorney General Mike Cox first defended Shirvell’s right to free-speech, he since asked that Shirvell take “a leave of absence.”
The Democratic candidate for the Michigan AG job has said that if elected, he’ll fire Shrivell immediately, adding that the current AG doesn’t “have the guts” to fire the “hatemonger” and instead continues to pay Shrivell a taxpayer-funded salary. Unsurprisingly, the Republican candidate says Shirvell has a right to his opinion.

Shrivell had an interview with the silver fox Anderson Cooper on CNN in which Cooper basically pwned him. Amusingly enough, there’s now two Andrew Shirvells battling it out with varying degrees of homophobia on Twitter—but it’s likely neither are actually him considering that they have left tweets like these:

– I just found out on Wikipedia that @andersoncooper is gay… 🙁

– To the people saying I’m secretly gay…stop it before you go on my blog.

– My GIRLFRIEND and I are going to dinner tonight. Grizzly Peak Brewing here I come!

– My big collection of DISGUSTING gay porno a necessary evil to know what enemy’s up to. Doing right is hard.

– Staring into ppl’s windows is NOT cyberstalking, dummies. Look it up, if you even have a Bible, you Christian-haters.

– Great, someone found my house and took a dump on my welcome mat… HUMAN FECES.. ON MY WELCOME MAT!! 🙁

Why do we have so much anti-gay animus floating around? Dave Rubin from Ben and Dave’s Six Pack partially blames anti-gay politicians and closeted celebs who fail to stand up as a role model, implicitly implying that there’s something wrong with being gay:

Yes, we have some gay people on TV, usually to discuss gossip or fashion or to be the sidekick of a reality housewife, but we still don’t have any real role models. Just having anything isn’t always better than having nothing. And let me be clear, I have nothing against these people, and I’m not judging them at all. I hope they all are who they want to be and are happy, fulfilled people. The problem here is that on one hand the media only rewards gay people who seem to be fabulous, vapid, self-centered fashionistas, and then on the other hand wonders why no gay people have anyone to identify with out there. And then the media wonders why gay teens, who feel profoundly alone because they can’t find someone to identify with, suddenly kill themselves.

So, naturally, Perez Hilton, the self-proclaimed “Queen of All Media” tweets about how awful this all is, and various groups start doing videos of celebrities saying it is okay to be gay. And yes, that is good, people seeing that there are people who say it is okay to be who you are. But at the same time everyone knows about all the closeted actors, musicians, TV personalities and news anchors, who all talk about the problem but don’t practice what they preach. Instead they tacitly endorse something wrong with gay. And making videos about suicide keeps the focus on suicide, so then all you see on TV are more stories about suicide, and then the same fashionistas and closet cases who wonder why. It is all nobody’s fault and everybody’s fault at the same time.

Luckily, we queers have our advocates too. Sex columnist and DILF Dan Savage started the It Gets Better campaign, encouraging adults to tell bullied gay teens that life gets better past the teenage years. Ellen Degeneres made a compelling message against anti-gay bullying. The US Secretary of Education made a comment discouraging school bullying. And even Mason Wyler has posted a blog in support of gays struggling against adversity:

I use to be a pretty negative guy. Complaining all the time about this and that. I had a short temper, I was easily annoyed, and eternally pessimistic. I was even given the nick name Mason Whiner by a few of my co-workers. Well not anymore! Those days are over. I’m POSITIVE now and there’s no going back to being negative. Adversity builds character so be GRATEFUL if your world isn’t all roses and sunshine. No matter what life throws at you it’s always best to vent, breathe, and move on. Live your life, Don’t end your life.

Do as Mason says kiddies, not as he does. The fact that 50 Cent felt the need to explain his pussy eating comment and that Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss recently let go a staff member (though he may not have been fired) who left a hateful anti-gay comment on a gay blog earlier this month shows that we’re winning against hate. Don’t stand for bullying. If you see it, stop it. If you know someone being bullied, help them. And don’t be a bully yourself, eh?