Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
February 11, 2004
Not a good sign
Category: Serious

Yay, Dawn's mentioned/linked us again. 🙂 Unfortunately for those of you who've followed that link over, I don't have much in the way of new substantial content for you at the moment; I've promised myself that I won't write any more significant posts until I finish writing the short story that I'm currently working on. (But if you want to check out a recent substantial piece, try "For Hannah" and let me know what you think. Dawn enjoyed it, but it's also moved one person to discontinue speaking to me, and I haven't heard from Hannah since I posted it -- not a good sign. In any case, it's definitely getting mixed reviews...)

In the meantime, they say a picture's worth a thousand words, right? My word count value's about to go up by 2K, then.

In her latest post -- the first section of which is entitled "Joshua Fit the Battle of Clericals", and it goes from there -- Dawn responds to an e-mailer who likens her take on homosexuality to that of the Christian hate group God Hates Fags (GHF). I think Dawn does a pretty good job of responding to the charge herself, but since I was one of the people who wrote in to let her know that I enjoyed her piece and thought it was a fair treatment of the issue -- despite that I don't entirely agree with it, it probably ranks among my favorites -- I figure I'll say a little something on the matter. Just a little, because I'm not supposed to be writing this.

First off, go back and read Dawn's initial post on the subject of homosexuality -- the one that sparked the "controversy", as it were, and the one that I very much enjoyed -- "Mass., Alas!".

Then, look at the following pictures. On April 14, 2003, GHF came to Yale to protest on the, and yours truly was in attendance. Not because I agree with them, though I did want to hear Phelps preach on the matter -- mostly because I thought it would be hilarious in the ridiculous sort of way. (I've listened to some of his sermons on the web, and they're pretty funny for about three minutes. Then I have to stop listening out of disgust.) Unfortunately, Phelps was MIA, and the most speaking the protesters did was to shout, "You filthy fag! You're disgusting!" at everyone who passed them. But I wasn't planning to ridicule them outright; I was there to document the event, and attended mainly to take pictures and observe. And here's what I observed:

God Hates Fags protest

In case the picture's too small for you to make out the signs, they read, from left to right, ELCA SIN, MATT 4 Yrs IN HELL, GOD BLEW UP THE SHUTTLE, AIDS IS GOD'S CURSE, and -- the favorite of many, I'm sure -- THANK GOD FOR Sept. 11.

But wait! Let's have a closer look here...

KIDS!!!!!!!

YES, THEY BROUGHT THEIR KIDS AND MADE THEM HOLD THESE SIGNS.

Obviously, I had to get pretty close to take that picture, and being that close and given that I like kids -- and that my mission was a "journalistic" one -- I talked a little to the kids. And here's where my heart breaks. They were really sweet kids, obliging and pliant, and I'm pretty sure they understood very little about what was going on. What's more, they seemed really uncomfortable. Of course, that's completely understandable, with their mother shouting, "You filthy fags!" at people on the street and with people shouting nasty things right back, while they held placards depicting two figures about to have anal sex (I didn't even know what sex was at their age, anal or otherwise) and the face of a dead boy who is supposedly "in Hell" now -- but that's got to be torture, and from the brief words I had with the kids I could tell that they didn't want to be there at all. I didn't get to say much, though, because before too long their mother turned to me and shouted, "You filthy fag! You're disgusting!" and I got the hell away from that bitch.

Dawn is nothing like her.

Alright, that's a wrap. Back to that story...

-posted by Wes | 9:11 am | Comments (0)
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