Persecuting for God
Dec 9th, 2011 by Kimberly
bully (n) : a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.
bully (v) : to act the bully toward; intimidate; domineer.
This past Monday, I finished up writing the third column in my series about the holidays, and felt – well, “serene” probably says it best. I had just spent three essays talking about the days we set aside on the calendar as holy, and at some point in there ideas started to pop up that I hadn’t thought out ahead of time. The words just flowed through the fingers, impulse to key stroke. When I finished up, I shimmered with the discovery that somehow, God had blessed me with the ability to write something worth reading.
That was a pleasant twenty minutes. Then there was the rest of my week.
Let me back up. In between moments of writing on Sunday – and yes, there actually were some – I flipped over to Facebook and stumbled on a youtube video from a teenager named Jonah Mowry. The clip was simple but effective. Jonah, a thirteen-year-old boy, held up flashcards in front of the camera while some haunting music played. Through the cards, he explained that he was gay and was terrified to go back to school, because he was bullied so badly. By that evening, I had also found the series of response clips to Jonah’s message – video after video of other people, using Jonah’s same style with the cards, telling him that they had had similar experiences and that he was not alone. Several of them even posted email addresses for him to contact if he needed someone to talk to.
On Monday, I found the response to the responses – another video, featuring Jonah and his friend Kira. This time, there’s no sad music, and Jonah smiles a lot. In between snaps of his gum, he tells the viewing public that his life is just fine, and most everyone at his school loves him. It’s hard to believe it’s the same kid, and indeed, I had to do some research before I could even come close to believing that it was. But from the articles I’ve read, Jonah has come a long way since he made the first video, and the fact that the thing went viral and people from all over responded to it helped him to get through a dark time.
“Hooray!” Right? Thirteen-year-old boy does not kill self, finds that he has friends after all, and lives to chew gum another day. Evidently I was alone in thinking that, though. “How could you?” sums up most of the responses. Jonah lied to everyone, they said, put all of us through the emotional wringer for nothing, and the gum chewing, dear God, the gum chewing. Shame on him.
I figured, I hoped actually, that Jonah’s second video meant that some of his classmates had gotten the message, and that life had improved in his school. Yes, the gum chewing was annoying, but as someone who was a fourteen-year-old once and has interacted with several others since, I can attest that the breed does a lot of annoying things. It’s part of the journey from childhood to adulthood, where one flirts with maturity while not actually having grasped the concept yet. Given time, Jonah may outgrow it.
Was the first video an act, something he did to get attention? I doubt it, but I’ll let you in on a little secret – I don’t actually care. Even if he invented the story out of whole cloth in between make-out sessions with his girlfriend, I’m still glad he made the video. If he didn’t go through that sadness, I thank God for it. Because whether or not he did, other people have, and still do.
Bullying exists: a cowardly yet brutal way that children everywhere learn only the strong deserve to survive. Students are bullied for many other reasons that just their sexuality, of course. I got bullied as a kid because I was too “dainty.” My tormentor informed me that guys didn’t like dainty girls, they liked girls who were “sporty”, like she was. I needed to change, and she would comment on my every disagreeable trait until I had overcome them all. (Years later, I realized that I was not terribly dainty right about the same time that I learned there are many guys in the world who adore dainty girls. Oh, the irony.)
Do you notice the subtle overtones there? This girl (whom I will not name, in the hopes that somewhere along the line she evolved into a better person) told me that I had a problem, and she was, in essence, helping me by making my life hell every time I tried to open my mouth. It’s the same line that Jonah and other gay people are given all the time. We are trying to help them, by ostracizing them from the community. How will they ever change their ways and come to realize God’s love if we don’t throw verbal stones at them whenever they leave their homes? And if the verbal stones don’t work, what other choice do we have but to move on to physical ones? Many of those schoolyard bullies are taught that really, those weird kids need to be picked on. Toughens ’em up, you know.
The logic of hurting someone so that they will eventually find love is so completely twisted I can’t even begin to analyze it, but we humans employ it with disturbing regularity. Just like everything else, children learn it from watching their parents, and they practice until they have found ways to destroy their fellow beings that exceed their parents’ wildest imaginings. And generation after generation, we find that the most effective way to shatter people involves convincing our victims that the torment is in their own best interests.
During this same week, I read an article called “Why You’re Not Married,” by Tracy McMillan. I should know better by now, I really should. I don’t cry about my single status every day, because it does have its advantages. Since, however, finding someone to share my life with is an attractive concept, I’ve read dozens of articles under similar headings, hoping to find something that will explain the mysteries of the universe to me. Every time I find something that, while possibly logical, doesn’t tell me anything particularly helpful. This time was the same, but I’ll give the author credit: she found a way to make it sound different. It would appear that I am still single because I am:
1. A bitch
2. Shallow
3. A slut
4. A liar
5. Selfish
6. Undeserving of love
It’s unclear whether I actually have to be all of these things, or if any one of them is enough. I should probably email her and ask. I would, except that I’d really like to make sure this woman and I never interact, even on the internet.
True to form, the first paragraph of the piece appealed to my vulnerability. The author discussed how, if you tried to be an independent woman, it was hard to admit to yourself that you actually wanted to be married. She gives a fair description of hitting a point in your thirties when all of a sudden you start to wonder what’s wrong with you, that this pairing that happens with regularity in your circle of friends hasn’t happened to you yet. And then, just when you lean in to hear what she has to say in explanation, she lays you out with a series of emotional sucker punches.
To be fair, under #6, she did add that this wasn’t her opinion, it was my decision about myself, and that it was important to tell myself that I was good enough, right now. But after she had so explicitly told me all my flaws in #1-5, I found her contention that this assessment was wrong to be at best half-hearted. By the way, she followed it up with the insistence that I need to start believing in myself because women with low self-esteem make terrible wives. (Reassuring, really, to know that even if I could convince some loser to marry me, it would never last. By the way, under her credentials, Ms. McMillan lists having been married and divorced three times. Hmm.)
Why, why, why do we feel the need to do this to each other? It’s bad enough that we humans cling to the fantasy that finding a weaker person and beating the snot out of them will make us feel better. Why must we disguise this wretched tendency as a way to help people? Read the definition at the top of this post again. There is no way to badger, intimidate, or domineer someone for their own good. The possibility doesn’t exist. Even if you think you’re being reasonable – if the other person interprets your actions as any of the above, there’s a good chance you’ve gotten off-track somewhere.
The whole problem came to excruciatingly bright light in an anti-bullying bill that I read about later in this week that seemed like it would never end, or improve. The Michigan Senate passed legislation against bullying which, thanks to an amendment added by Senator Rick Jones of Grand Ledge, promised that the measure would in no way “prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.”
Folks, statements are one thing, but this bill wasn’t talking about open debate or civilized conversation. We’re talking about incidents where a child is being harassed. I’m fairly certain there is no “moral” way to victimize people. If you’ve read anything in your journey to spiritual enlightenment that says you should find vulnerable humans and manipulate them into something that you approve of, go back and read it again. I’m quite certain you missed something. You may believe what you want to believe, but when your belief infringes on someone else’s right to go about his day in peace, things change. Persecuting people for God is, always has been and always will be an oxymoron. Talk about your slippery slopes. This one led to the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust. (I’m happy to say that the Michigan House passed a version without the amendment, and that’s the version that got signed by the governor, but it’s an embarrassment to our entire country that the first version got passed at all.)
When I was a kid and had Sporty Girl and her posse following me around, people told me to be tough. Mostly, I just ran away, and made sure that I went to the restroom with a group of friends. (Bathroom stalls are a lot more vulnerable than you might think.) Did it make me a stronger person? Probably, and I’m grateful to God for helping to bring something good out of a bad situation. But having gotten me through it, I think God wants me to do my best to see that it never happens to anyone else.
That’s why God helps us to be strong – so that we can make our world a place where it’s safe to be vulnerable.
Kimberly can’t judge Sporty Girl too harshly, because she too has tried to mold others into a shape pleasing to herself. May God forgive them both.
