Homophobic Bullying Takes Another Teen Life

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
September 26, 2011

Beyond grief is the loss of young Jamey Rodemeyer, only 14, whose fragile ego was finally crushed by the poison of homophobic bullying from classmates at his Williamsville North High School in upstate New York on September 20, 2011.

A child's death at any young age is tragic enough, but a deliberately targeted murder seems more horrible than an accidental or disease death. This child was clearly an innocent victim of American scripture-based discrimination against homosexuals.

Hatred in youth is inherited from hatred in parents, peers, church, school, society, government. Homophobia so devastating and pervasive among bigots that it is taken as normal, as a right of passage in high school, as a righteous act of religious ethics, as a popular political position.

Homophobia is truly a social cancer that kills children. If a manufactured product injured children or a medication were deemed harmful it would be recalled and removed from store shelves very quickly. But because so many local and federal politicians are steeped in self-declared 'legitimate scriptural views' of sex and marriage they feel homophobia is justified; based in blood-soaked Biblical-Koranic-Talmudic conditioning this killer disease remains in the public domain with no remedy in sight.

In a slight gesture toward justice (revenge is what many are calling for against the perpetrators, their parents and school officials) the local police in Amherst, NY, are investigating to determine if any hate crimes were committed against Jamey; it's hard to imagine they were not as he received anonymous (and traceable) condemnations and urgings to kill himself from schoolmates.

These bullying kids had no idea of the deadly effect of their actions, not unlike being ignorant of the risks of playing with a loaded gun; stupid on their part and irresponsible on their parents' part.

Jamey had been verbally assaulted by cyberbullies who made degrading comments with gay slurs on his Formspring account, a website that allows anonymous postings. "JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND [sic] UGLY. HE MUST DIE!" one post reportedly said. Another read, "I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!"

The danger of such abuse we have known for a long time. To counter this criminal behavior the internet pro-gay 'It Gets Better' campaign has been online for over a year. Strangely, Jamey had posted his own video on YouTube that was encouraging in tone and looked beyond current problems to future promise of better times.

But something snapped in his mind within a month and he collapsed under the cruel rejection from schoolmates. Shame is one of the most painful punishments a person can endure. Many Asian and Arab gay people remain deep in the closet for fear of being shamed or bringing dishonor to their families. Other LGBT people have come out and in turn been murdered by a family member to avenge the dishonor.

Such powerful hate-and-shame-fueled homophobia is so overwhelming that it turns a loving parent or brother into a murderous family member. What switch gets flipped to turn love to hate for no apparent reason--no action, no words, no overt offense from the gay person.

And from classmates who have less bonding the curses are all the more easy to make. This is not just a personal tragedy, it's a national disgrace among those who advocate intolerance and discrimination.

Also see:
Lady Gaga dedicates song to Jamey Rodemeyer
GlobalGayz blog about teen suicides.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell--Gone, Not a Day Too Soon

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
September 20, 2011

Another pernicious piece of discrimination and bigotry has gone under the wheels of progress, and not a day too soon.

How legislators can twist themselves and our country into illogical contortions of ignorance that blatantly violate constitutional rights with such laws as DADT, is beyond me.

But not really given so many other shameful statutes such as the DOM act that is supposed to protect straight marriage. Protect from what? DODT protect troops from what? Is sexual orientation a form of disease?
(photo: Col. Grete Cammermeyer)

DODT was a piece of legislation but it was also symbolic of how socially diseased our conservative branch of culture is, how much our much balled Christian democracy can violate all spiritual decency and secular fairness.

I am repeatedly amazed at how much supposedly cognizant, rational, 21st century legislators can be so ignorant of their own irrational, undemocratic thinking that is based on primitive, revengeful, wrathful Biblical scripture which violates modern standards of respect.

DADT crushed constitutional guarantees of equality, heaped dishonor on honorable citizens, violated bonds of brotherhood in the military--all because of bizarre Biblical ancient phrases that have no relevance in modern society.

The repeal of DADT offers a glimmer of hope that secular, truly democratic, fully constitutional thinking can trump the homophobic distortions of right-wing primitive fundamentalist thinking.

A Word About Mychal Judge, NYC Gay Priest Who Died on 9/11

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
September 12, 2011

Many stories circulate about this Catholic clergyman, a Franciscan friar; about his past alcoholism; his down-to-earth style of ministering; chaplain for the New York Fire Department; saying mass in the local firehouse; dubbed the 'Saint of 9/11,' in a 2006 documentary; his private homosexual orientation; his friendships with homeless people, rock-and-rollers, recovering alcoholics, local politicians, and middle-aged couples from the suburbs; and his love of Irish music...

In a word, Mychal Judge was a man of cross-cultural compassion whose hazel eyes saw a person's soul and the good in each regardless of their world circumstances. A man whose ecclesiastical training was set in one doctrinal system but who embraced all doctrines. No divisions, no prejudice, no boundaries.

He was a good man in the most real sense of the word: benevolent, a person who (from Middle High German 'gatern') united differences and offered his heart to those who lost theirs or were weak in spirit.

I doubt there a better way to describe to describe Mychal Judge--or Jesus himself--two men who died before their time serving others.

Also read:
-The lesson we could all learn from the gay hero of 9/11
-More stories about Mychal Judge
-Final video footage before his death

The lesson we could all learn from the gay hero of 9/11:
Brendan Fay, a friend of the priest, said of him: "On 9/11, the one thing we can take from Mychal Judge is, in the midst of this hell and war and evil and violence, here is this man who directs us to another possible path as human beings. We can choose the path of compassion and non-violence and reconciliation. Mychal Judge had a heart as big as New York. There was room for everybody. And I think that's the lesson."

9/11: Grief and Ignorance

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
September 11, 2011

9/11 comes on strong this year, a flood of media stories, personal memorials, new analyses, videos of ground zero, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Grief, horror, shock and much loss. My cousin emerged from the subway at Church Street that morning, looked up and saw the collapsing mushroom cloud and ran for his young life, not stopping for fifty blocks, he said later.

Sudden human death is one of life's most traumatic events. An attack of this kind evokes severe anguish for loved ones and overwhelming anger at the perpetrators. The terrorist group that engineered this nightmare were acutely mad and hateful; since then they have been justifiably demonized. America the wounded heroic country assailed by a wacko fringe of Saudi Al Qaeda killers .

So the usual version goes as we focus on our own aggrieved feelings and reject those killer Muslims.

But in today's complex world, the story of 9/11 is not simple. The necessary and unanswerable question is 'why'? Why were 3000 people slaughtered on that September day (plus post-attack 4500 war-related deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan)? Who and why could be so hateful to cause such devastation

'Muslim extremists' is the overt answer. They envied our American way of life. They hate our religion and our democracy and free markets. Demonizing starts and ends there for most people--us and them.

But the larger answer is less simple and less self righteous. Since the 20th century America has positioned itself, indeed intruded itself, as a militant godfather into the affairs of foreign nations: Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Argentina, Panama, Serbia, two European 'World' wars and (post 9/11) Iraq and Afghanistan to mention only some overt actions. Many more intrusions are covert and hidden from the public view.

America has also inserted itself as a charitable nation as well. Countless humanitarian governmental and non-governmental (NGO) organizations exist overseas working on behalf of health, agriculture, industry and politics. No country in the history of civilization has ever intended more help for others. Much good has been done; much love has been left behind--but also resentment in the form of our materialistic and condescending style of 'helping' others, in both visible and invisible actions. Aid workers ride around in white pickups and SUVs leaving dust behind in the faces of impoverished walking locals on their way to an American-funded water well.

In India I once spoke with a local AIDS organization director who turned down millions of Gates Foundation money because GF had their own idea of how to do HIV outreach in India. The rejection set GF back and forced them to reconsider their approach to native traditions and methods. Only when they agreed to follow the local lead did the money flow to the Indians.

The point here is that American good will is not so welcome around the world because it comes with strings attached: our way of life is better so do things our way. Our materialist wealth has lead to militaristic, religious and political arrogance and condescension toward smaller less powerful countries, which is felt and tolerated for the most part because they need the money.

But 'terrorists' (activists who resort to violence) don't want the money. They want their own culture, religion, laws and forms of government--whether American agrees with them or not. They hate our style of pushing small nations around and manipulating their politics. And they hate our neglect of desperate nations who do need our help but are mostly ignored. Perhaps more than any other nation, the 'nation' of Palestine has been viewed by many--especially Arabs--as an abused punching bag of western power (which includes Israel). Sixty years of conflict in the Palestine-Israel region still festers in the political bullring with no resolution in sight. Unconditional American support of Israel has brought down the wrath of Islam upon us, PLO terrorism not withstanding.

Is all this simplistic? Yes, but not wholly inaccurate. To understand why thousands of innocent American were killed on 9/11 we need to look at the thousands of lives lost, especially since World War II, in which America has transgressed on the territory and sovereignty of foreign nations. (We have been involved in 28 war actions since 1675; eleven of these on American soil; ten since and including WWII.)

We are not alone on this planet. We are not really a 'super' power with impunity for our foreign policies. We have offended others mightily. We are not wholly clean and the Arab and Muslims are not wholly dirty--we are all unclean with blood on our hands. 9/11 was a pitiful, small and horrifying effort at payback that solved nothing.

The only way forward to a peaceful world is to listen to one another as equals and join together to cure the hostility between our tribes. In the end, although some want war, most want peace much more.

How Far Away is Hope For LGBT People?

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
September 1, 2011

As I travel the world interviewing LGBT people about their lives, their cultures and countries I hear stories of effort, strategy, frustration and achievement. One question I have failed to ask these courageous activists, some risking their lives, is "how far away is hope?"

How far away is hope for equality, tolerance, acceptance, relationship recognition, political participation, religious compassion, social calmness...? And what is keeping it in the ever seemingly receding distance?

Another way to ask the question is how long will it take humankind to unlearn the teachings of religion against human sexuality. Indeed, can humanity unlearn something so ingrained in mind from religious prohibitions against sexuality--period. This most human of appetites is the most proscribed against.

The desire for another person is diminished by using the word sex; it reduces it to a genital activity when in truth there are more significant needs that are desired.

Even in the 'crass' exchange of money-for-sex , the so-called "world's oldest profession," there is good reason for that title. The desire for sexual intimacy has become hard-wired in our brains over milennia, beyond the instinct to procreate. With the developing mind becoming more learned by acquiring knowledge and sophisticated systems for survival, came also an increase in more sophisticated desire called intimacy, mental contact, emotional affection, nurturing, warmth, touch...

This want runs so deep that people will kill for it. Crimes of passion are a common occurrence in 'civilized' humanity, some resort to murder when it is frustrated , denied or betrayed.

The challenging question is, given this core aspect of human nature why is it that the religious/spiritual thought/belief systems that have emerged recently, over two or three thousand years, have become so antagonistic toward a human's fundamental need for intimacy and sexual desire? And why/where/when has come this fanatical obsession to reject, discriminate, punish or kill people whose desire for intimacy leans toward their own gender?

It is one of the greatest paradoxes that such an essential trait has become so stigmatized, sometimes to the degree that torture and murder feel justified in an effort to eliminate it.

How far away is hope? About as far away as modern human sexuality is from the human truth that people are different; people are born straight, gay and in-between.

Homophobes refuse to see this truth and prefer to cling instead to their hostile opinions; they refuse to see these opinions as imaginary fabricated beliefs made up by a (very) few tribal men and scribbled down--for what reason scribbled down?--despite their own inherent human desire for intimacy. Why would these early scribes 'legislate' or opine against their own nature? At the time, the reasons were likely less religious than political. Indeed, were they in fact writing about intimacy and sexuality at all or something more public--the various language translations and the inevitable changes of word meanings, in addition to the uncertain original meanings, have obscured the initial intent.

So the current anathema against homosexual desire continues unabated, unexamined, unintelligent and has little to do with any kind of divine source. Simplicity is dangerous in the minds of ignorant people who will not look beyond their own fears. Gay people are not some modern scourge; same-sex desire is not a recent 'problem'. Ancient attitudes about homosexuality are not authoritatively known. It's claimed the Bible is the 'word of god' without realizing there were many gods back then. Was there a God of gods who took a consensus and decided that sex had to be confined and controlled and homesex was a no-no? The questions into the past become ludicrous the further back we look and try to think clearly.

How far away is hope? Fortunately modern civilization has improved in certain countries--in fits and starts, stumbling along but for the better--so that things like democracy, equality and human rights have taken root and helped create an international judicial belief system that parallels the religious system. Judicial thought and action has begun to turn back the excesses and abuses of religion and forwarded human rights as an equal and better way of managing civilization. Slowly in one country after another, officially sanctioned legal decisions have blocked religious persecution (in the guise of discriminatory political statutes) from advancing further against homosexually-inclined citizens.

Slowly, gays rights have become part of the fabric of human rights as one bias after another is being taken down: gay relationships are legal, gay marriage is legal (and published in the New York Times); gays in the military will soon be legal; discrimination in jobs, housing, health care and inheritance are illegal; child adoption by gay couples is legal... All of which were opposed and prayed about by religious institutions. (Imagine praying to one's God on behalf of discrimination and bigotry!)

How far away is hope? In Zimbabwe or Iran it is far distant. In Holland, UK or, unevenly, in USA hope has already arrived.