Editorial note: Today we bring you part one in a five-part series, “A Small Town Gay Teen’s Suicide,” in the hopes we can all learn what hate-speech, born of ignorance and homophobia, sounds like.
On Monday, we told you about Zach Harrington, the Norman, Oklahoma gay nineteen-year old who sat for three hours in his city council’s town hall-style meeting listening to the debate over whether or not to approve a proclamation honoring the month of October as “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History Month.” The rhetoric, ignorance, and hatred he heard from his neighbors was so intense, he took his own life.
The local newspaper reports Harrington’s father, Van, while blaming the comments from the debate for his son’s suicide, doesn’t hold them solely responsible. “Van Harrington said he feels a lack of acceptance from society and what he calls a “toxic meeting†last month is what finally pushed Zach over the edge.â€
Thanks to NGBlog‘s YouTube channel we can bring you a few of Zach Harrington’s neighbor’s opinions about something so simple as a “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History Month.” Keep in mind, this was merely a discussion about a proclamation. Imagine if they were “debating” same-sex marriage?
This isn’t pretty. I think it’s important you hear what they have to say, so you know how to respond the next time you run into a bible-belt, bible-thumping homophobe.
I’ve watched and listened to most of the debate in its entirety, and you can too, here. I want to point out that there were many citizens who stood in favor of the proclamation. Indeed, the city council passed it 7-1. But the hate, ignorance, homophobia, and invective language spoken here is, I believe, indicative of what we’re up against, at least in the bible-belt, and in many “God-fearing” communities.
I also believe we have the professional bullies to blame for this ignorance, ignorance that caused this young man’s death, and that caused the death of ten other teens in September alone.
In this series, you’ll hear one man tell the city council and all his neighbors that 78% of all gays currently have a sexually-transmitted disease. He believes that to be true. (Of course it’s not true!)
What he’s probably referring to is this line from CatholicEducation.org: “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identified a 1991 outbreak of Hepatitis A in New York City, in which 78 percent of male respondents identified themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” I won’t waste my time to research if that is true. Even if it was true, it was three decades ago. And that’s a far-cry from, “78% of all gays currently have a sexually-transmitted disease.”
But repeat it enough and you can get anyone to believe, “78% of all gays currently have a sexually-transmitted disease.”
Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Marriage, the Family Research Institute, and the Traditional Values Coalition, to name a few, are responsible for the hate-speech that armed these citizens of Norman, and drove one of their neighbors to suicide.
I invite anyone from Norman to contact me to share their thoughts on the proclamation, and on the life and death of Zach Harrington.
In this first video, meet Mr. Slippery Slope. Here’s what he says will happen, merely by approving a proclamation honoring LGBTQ history month: Homosexuality will be “infiltrated” into the schools, schools will be forced to teach about how people came out, there will be pictures of gay sex shown to children in school, “recruiting children into these lifestyles will be very easy,” hate crimes laws will be passed to discriminate against anyone who speaks out about homophobia, the bible will be banned, the bible will be called a hate book, clergy will be put in jail…