This makes me happier than the news that the SF Giants are joining the “It Gets Better” Project: the president of the officially-designated hate group Concerned Women for America was watching American Idol when Google Chrome/It Gets Better ad aired. Penny Nance scolded Fox on her blog:
Thank you for cleaning up the Viagra commercials Fox, but PLEASE what’s with the new tolerance for homosexuals campaign disguised as anti-bullying? Bullying is wrong. It is wrong for any reason. Apparently, American Idol with the help of Woody from Disney’s Toy Story, thinks that my 4th grader needs to be fully aware of the plight of teens who view themselves as “gay.” I am sorry, but he doesn’t even know about heterosexual sex yet. Can you give me some room here? I am ticked because I feel tricked. Fox blew it last night. The point is parents felt secure in allowing our entire families watch this show. They lured us into a false sense of security and broke trust with us last night.
A few thoughts…
First: A fourth grader who “doesn’t know” about heterosexual sex? Is she raising that kid in a skinner box in her basement and only letting him out to watch American Idol?
Second: The Google Chrome/”It Gets Better” ad doesn’t promote or discuss or campaign for homosexual sex. It acknowledges the existence of LGBT people and LGBT kids and gives those LGBT kids hope for their futures. Acknowledging the existence of LGBT people does not raise awareness of the specifics of gay sex anymore than acknowledging the existence of heterosexuals raises awareness of the specifics of heterosexual sex. This is a popular argument among haters like Nance: Talking about gay people = talking about buttfucking! But talking about straight people ≠ talking about twatfucking. Because straight relationships are not defined by sex. Straight relationships are about love and commitment and family and big fancy weddings and Jesus! But gay people? We’re not about any of those things. We’re about buttfucking.
Third: Mission accomplished.
The primary goal of the IGB campaign was to reach LGBT kids who are being bullied by their peers and their families. LGBT kids are four times likelier to attempt suicide—unless their parents are hostile. LGBT kids whose parents are hostile are eight times likelier to attempt suicide. The bullying and hostility and rejection too many LGBT kids are subjected to by their own families is by far the most destructive kind of bullying. And those kids—kids with parents like Nance—are the ones who most need to find their way to www.itgetsbetter.org.
Now I don’t know if Nance’s son is gay, bi, or trans, but if he is, he needs to know more than most that it can get better for him too, that there’s hope for his future, and that the adult world isn’t entirely populated by hateful shits like his mother. He needs to know that there are a lot of people out there rooting for him: lesbian dairy farmers, trans porn stars, gay doctors, Woody—even the president of the United States.
And if Nance’s son finds his way to www.itgetsbetter.org—maybe not now, maybe in a year or two (I knew for sure that I was gay by the time I was in the seventh grade)—”It Gets Better” videos won’t just give him hope for his own future. They’ll also give him hope his family’s future too. There are a ton of videos at www.itgetsbetter.org created by LGBT adults whose families were hostile when they first came out but whose families now love and accept them. So if Nance’s son is gay—and here’s hoping—and finds his way to the “It Gets Better” website, he’ll hear from moms and dads who used to feel the same way his mother does now but who grew and changed. He’ll meet moms and dads who now reject anti-gay bigotry, not their gay children.
Nance’s son was always our target demo. Again, we don’t know if he’s gay. But he might be and, if he is, he needs to hear from us. And the Google Chrome/”It Gets Better” campaign has helped us reach him and millions more like him.
And one day, Penny, if it turns out that your son is gay, and if the “It Gets Better” Project helps him survive his last years under your roof, you’ll thank us—the tens of thousands of people who’ve made videos for the “It Gets Better” Project, Google, Woody, everyone—for helping to save your son’s life.
@ 49 – But you don’t answer why that makes me “inarticulate”, “uneducated”, “inferior in just about every sense of the word”, or “useless”.
Still waiting for a valid answer, but please take this into account: there’s more to a person’s life than their posts on Slog. (Well, maybe not in your case…)
@47: I see what you mean, Ricardo. Unintentionally hilarious indeed.
(Go on, Puck, call me fat and bald again. That was so funny the first time!)
An answer isn’t valid…
@52
No! I asked if you were bald or balding, and I conjectured that you’re a shapeless white male pushing forty. And yes, it was hilarious…and quite intentionally so.
@ 53 Definitely not if it was written by you, Humpty Dumpty!!!
Valid, as defined by Webster:
a : well-grounded or justifiable : being at once relevant and meaningful b : logically correct
As defined by Cambridge American English:
based on truth or reason; able to be accepted
@ 53 – Oh, and speaking of arguments, when the only thing you can come up with to silence an out gay man is calling him a “gayfag”, what does that say about you?
oy…you’re so fucking uneducated. Arguments are valid or invalid; propositions are true or false. Apparently this is going to be another scare quotes are grammatically incorrect exchange, and can’t be used to indicate irony, sarcasm, skepticism, or draw attention to a word by the writer according to retardo.
Well, retardo, you’re a gayfag. It says a lot…about you.
@56: Well, he seems to think that calling someone “a shapeless white male pushing forty” is hilarious, so I wouldn’t go looking for too much in the way of actually useful content from anything he posts. He’s slightly more amusing than the average troll, but that’s about it.
@ 57/58 – Thanks for proving my point with every post you write. You are indeed hilarious.
It’s already been established that I’m elderly, but how old are you exactly, 12? 14? (And we’ll want a birth certificate to prove it, too!)
I’m much younger than you, 60. Much, much younger than you, and always will be. Who’s this “we”? Is dimensia setting in, old man? And you have proven mine.
@48, no problem. We’ve all goofed on a reading some time or another. We can be thankful that no matter how silly we are sometimes, we’ll never be as dumb as Penny Nance (barring head injuries).
It’s spelled “dementia”, and no, I don’t suffer from it: being a queen, I feel entitled to use the royal “we” anytime I like.
You do realize that with this, you’ve unknowingly demonstrated that all your arrogant pontificating on language is just as empty as your brains, right?
But you still don’t provide an answer to the question… You must be ashamed, then.
I’ve never understood the gay = butt fucking connection. I know gay dudes that don’t like to do that plus I’m straight and so is my wife and we love to fuck each other in the ass (yes, I’m a straight dude likes it in the ass A LOT) and we watch tons of anal porn. The idea of a dude fucking in me in the ass though not disgusting is not a turn on. Watching my wife have a dude fuck her in the ass on the other hand most definitely is!
You got me about the spelling of ‘dementia’, retardo. But if you’re drawing attention to the spelling of a word or word itself, and not its meaning, disquotation is the correct grammatical device. Like someone at walgreens saying hello to you when you pick up your many prescriptions, I’m sure that made your day. Oh, and the royal we! That’s what nutters and olds say to cover for their unintentional lapses.
Yes, realize that my arrogant pontificating on language…has…how is it possible that you’re still alive? I mean, you lived through the worst of the aids crisis, and by dint of dumb luck (DUMB!), you’re still puttering along. It’s true that aids took the smartest, best looking and most talented of your generation and left the likes of you.
@ 65 – Only very, very immature people think that making fun of the aids crisis is in any way acceptable as an argument. Or very, very dumb ones.
For my part, I’d say both.
I rest my case. Had enough of a laugh for today.
I’m not making fun of the aids crisis. It’s just an observation….aids took a legion of gay men who you were unfit to lick the boots of, and left the largely ineffective, stupid moronic and unattractive behind (viz., people like you). For your generation, not mine. It’s not an argument, either. It’s observation, ya fuckin’ dope. Fran Lebowitz made it, too.
Straights need to know it gets better too; some of us were also raised by hateful shits–Hi, Mom!–and need to hear that hateful shittery need not be our destiny.
Confidential to the kid: You can–and should–decide to be decent even if you’re straight. It’s okay to find Mom’s behavior disgraceful, it’s okay for you to decide to be different. I did, and I’m a far better man for it.
The really scary subversive message in this ad [for fundies] is that “you are fine just the way you are”. Kids (gay or straight) who don’t internalize deep existential shame will grow up immune to their control.
@53: A master is out.
Troll here provides another datapoint for the study that found that a lot of people in the bottom quarter of intelligence mistakenly believe they are in the top quarter.
Nance writes, “Bullying is wrong. It is wrong for any reason.” If she does, in fact, think bullying is wrong for any reason, then she should _support_ an ad condemning the bullying of GLBT people. I challenge her to come up with a better ad that keeps the anti-bullying message and acknowledges GLBT people.
Beautifully written, perfectly true.
Again, St. Savage, thank you for being such a diligent guardian angel.
( ( ( D A N ) ) )
I think it’s telling that rightwing Christianist bigots are adamant that any talk about the existence of GLBT people is really only talking about “deviant” sex. I have several thoughts about this phenomenon:
1) I suspect that’s how it was with people who opposed interracial marriage 40 years ago. When you read (and read between the lines of) primary sources of anti-miscegenation literature, it’s very straightforward about keeping black men and white women from fucking. Which, if you believe the old white dude writing it, is all that black men and white women want to do.
2) Insomniacs think about sleep more than people who get 8 hours every night. Anorexics think about cheeseburgers more than the guy who eats 2 a day. So when do you think was the last time that Ms. Nance had an orgasm? I would feel sorry for this woman, if she wasn’t taking every step she could to prevent Dan from marrying his husband and me from my getting my birth control.
3) How on earth does Concerned Women for America think that they can prevent people from having sex? If our species didn’t want to do pleasurable, unprintable things to the people we love as a matter of course, we would have died out a long time ago. Trying to prevent dirty, godless, exhilarating sex is like screaming at the sea, it won’t stop the tides.
4) I can’t watch that commercial without tearing up a bit. Google did a brave thing when it made and then paid to run that commercial during the most widely watched television program in America.
Hey Penny, want to reduce the amount of gay-topic media coverage so that your child doesn’t ask you uncomfortable questions? Then give us our equality, and we’ll return to living our lives instead of making a big stink about being second-class citizens! Until then, you’re in for a fight that is bound to attract media coverage that your child will undoubtably see.
Watching American Idol never brought up the issue of homosexuality before? Guess she missed the whole Adam Lambert season.
Penny, just flip the channel to Fox News so that you can continue to pretend that Murdoch really cares about your values.
Folks, are we not missing the irony in this comment: “the adult world isn’t entirely populated by hateful shits like his mother”.
For someone who preaches tolerance, Dan really is showing himself to be equally bigoted.
Definition of ‘bigot’ from dictionary.com:
a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.
And from the Cambridge dictionary:
a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong
I’m by no means defending Penny Nance (I’ve never heard of her), but the core of this discussion is conflicting worldviews – those who believe that homosexuality is acceptable and those who don’t. Everything else is fallout from that.
It’s quite sad that I’m reading a lot of intolerant statements here from those who probably pride themselves on being more open minded than those ‘evil’ fundamentalist Christians.
Folks, are we not missing the irony in this comment: “the adult world isn’t entirely populated by hateful shits like his mother”.
For someone who preaches tolerance, Dan really is showing himself to be equally bigoted.
Definition of ‘bigot’ from dictionary.com:
a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.
And from the Cambridge dictionary:
a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong
I’m by no means defending Penny Nance (I’ve never heard of her), but the core of this discussion is conflicting worldviews – those who believe that homosexuality is acceptable and those who don’t. Everything else is fallout from that.
It’s quite sad that I’m reading a lot of intolerant statements here from those who probably pride themselves on being more open minded than those ‘evil’ fundamentalist Christians.
Sorry for the double post.
Sorry for the double post.