It gets better - it also gets worse for others

Fucking brilliant.

Tyler Clementi/Dharun Ravi/Molly Wei - people are garbage, part 900

Yeah. Get us off the planet, please. All of us. As soon as possible. It's got to happen.

So do you know this story yet? Probably. It seems to be much larger than just around here. Well, here is the short version. Two college freshmen, Dharun Ravi and Tyler Clementi, shared a dorm at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. They do not seem to have been friends, and they did not know one another before September. Tyler was gay, but not out about it. Dharun found out about it, apparently through spying on him, when Tyler asked him to have the room to himself for a few hours, with his webcam and watching it in his friend's room. Her name is Molly Wei. She also goes to Rutgers. Or went. If she didn't stop going, I'm sure she'll be expelled with Dharun, or at least physically prohibited from going when they are in jail. So anyway, he was spying on him. He posted a message to Twitter about it on September 19th that read as such:

Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.

So the next time, he thought it would be funny, I guess, if he showed other people. Tyler again asked for the room, September 21st, and this was Dharun's reaction, again via Twitter:

Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again.

Tyler found out that this had happened (by reading Dharun's Twitter) and jumped off the George Washington Bridge the next day. They found his body yesterday or the day before, I don't know. He left shit on the bridge to identify him - his wallet, with ID inside. He posted this on his Facebook:

jumping off the gw bridge, sorry.

The day he killed himself, Tyler reported Dharun to the person in charge of his floor, as well as two of his superiors. The campus police got involved. Dharun and Molly were arrested and released. They are, for the time being, pre-body being found, facing up to five years for invasion of privacy.

So.

We have a lot of things here. The collision of technology and the ancient intolerance that seems to be endemic to our species, as far as recorded history tells it. The standard "homophobia." It still being largely acceptable to mock gay people, being gay, or having "gay" qualities.

Here are some stupid things people will/have said:

Dharun and Molly didn't mean for him to kill himself. Yeah, well, he jumped, didn't he?

He took it the wrong way. He took having his sexuality, of which he is supposed to be ashamed and for which he is generally reckoned to be going to hell, which is never looked upon by the world as a positive thing, that he had not told his parents (cause you have to tell people that you are gay, but not that you aren't gay) or anyone else, except the guy on the webcam with him, broadcast across the internet to anyone Dharun knew, and in turn anyone they knew and so forth, the wrong way? Yeah, I guess you're right.

It's not their fault he was ashamed of who he was. Well, yeah, it actually is. I doubt he was ashamed though, just made to feel that he should be. I know about that. They made him into a spectacle. What a freak, right?

It was a prank. Not really. I think what people mean by this, if they had the depth of intelligence to consider it, is that being a gay person is funny - it's a novelty. They are characters for us to laugh at, to observe.

He would have done it if Tyler were with a woman, too. Probably not, but I don't think too many people would be questioning if it were wrong if that were the case.

Dharun is open minded/has gay friends. All but the most ardent racists have black friends (especially the kind who say that there are black people and then there are niggers). You'll never meet them though.

They didn't realize what they are doing. If he didn't kill himself, would they ever have realized it? No, it would have kept being funny. Fact. They are fucking 18 years old. Adults. Gotta learn sometime, right? I was raised in the same shitty fucking society as they were, but I got the fucking message early on that it's not fucking ok to hate gay people or make anyone feel like shit for being born. They, apparently, did not get that message. Doesn't matter. You cannot excuse yourself from the grave consequences of actions you deliberately choose by saying "Oh, I didn't realize it." I don't fucking care what you did or didn't realize. Too late, huh? Here are some good examples of this reasoning that fall way short:

• "I only had five beers. I'm usually good like that. I must have fallen asleep."
• "Fuck, I didn't realize it was loaded."
• "I didn't mean to hit you that hard, I was angry."
• "I had no idea the knife was that sharp."
• "I didn't think it would actually hit you, I have bad aim."
• "Shit, I guess it will stain after all. Come on, it was a joke."

I know kids like this. Fucking assholes. I spent much of my life going to school with them. They are probably rich, given where they went to high school, or if not rich themselves, surrounded by a bunch of rich fucks with whom they had to keep up. I went to high school, and elementary, and middle school with a lot of rich kids and middle class kids whose parents pretended they were rich. I hate them. There are kids I knew then, ten, twenty years ago, who I still hope get in car accidents. There are armies of these assholes all over the place, and they often wind up running things. That's a big part of why shit sucks.

Fuck anyone who tells you to take it with a grain of salt, talks of not letting it affect you. I live with the mental and emotional marks those people inflicted on me from the time I was five years old. You try getting ripped down every day for over ten years and coming out on top.

My partner was watching this very nice video that Ellen DeGeneres made about her reaction to Tyler's suicide. It's also a message to kids like him. In it, she says, "I want anyone out there who feels different and alone to know that I know how you feel." My partner stopped it and started crying. She said that she wished she had someone to tell her that when she was younger. Me too.

And you know what else? I guarantee you that a ton of people who will say, "Oh, that's so terrible, such a tragedy..." will turn around and call someone a faggot five minutes later, or a fucking homo, or say "No homo" or tell someone how "gay" something is. FUCK ALL OF YOU.

Fucking assholes don't get it.

Let's start saying that things we don't like are not just gay, but Puerto Rican, fat, female, black, Chinese, cancerous, have Alzheimer's, fetal alcohol syndrome-ish, autistic, African, poor, Native American, schizophrenic, have eating disorders, Arab, paralyzed, amputated or rape victims.

Still hate this place

Fuck these people. Holy shit, I cannot emphasize "fuck them" enough. Were there a god, or if I had the slightest delusion that there were one, I swear I would dedicate entire days to praying for the extermination of such people:

Protect Marriage, the coalition of religious and conservative groups that sponsored the ban, said it would immediately appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"In America, we should uphold and respect the right of people to make policy changes through the democratic process, especially changes that do nothing more than uphold the definition of marriage that has existed since the founding of this country and beyond," said Jim Campbell, a lawyer on the defense team.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Get me the fuck out.

Gay people - fuck off, go to hell, YOU DON'T MATTER

Again. And again. And again. You aren't good enough, you are filthy, you are not one of us, you are not a real person. That's what they say, over and over. And that's what they said in New York today. And the people around you, they say, "Wait." They tell you to be patient. They say they're working on it. They tell you that your time will come. Like you should have to wait for some bigots to be pushed to the margins enough. Fuck. Just fuck.

New York state lawmakers voted on Wednesday against legalizing gay marriage, dashing gay rights activists' hopes it would become the sixth U.S. state to allow same-sex couples to wed.

The New York state Senate voted down the legislation by 38-24. Governor David Paterson, a Democrat who supports gay marriage, had said he would have signed the bill into law if it had passed.

"This is an enormous victory," said Maggie Gallagher, the leader of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposed the law. "What you saw was the will of the people. .... The culture really hasn't shifted on gay marriage."

Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont have legalized gay marriage, while 40 U.S. states have specific laws that ban gay marriage. Last month, voters in Maine chose to repeal a law that had legalized gay marriage.

Once again, in a familiar refrain, fuck this place.

Fuck every "save marriage" campaigner or whatever you want to call yourself. I hope all of your kids are gay and that each of you dies in a fire. Fuck all of you. You are nothing but hate. Fuck your religion. Fuck your god. Fuck the people who raised you. Fuck the people for whom you vote. Fuck your friends. You are shit.

I fucking hate this country, pt. 3

Just realized that this ("I fucking hate this country, pt. -) will be a long-running series.

I found some behind the scenes crap about how political marketing garbage (I will allow that they were at one point people) were paid to deploy their greatest efforts, using whatever imagery they found most effective, to ensure that gay people remain discriminated against, reviled and living in fear (when people are not afforded the full benefits of citizenship, you can be sure that they will treated as less than equal).

Gay marriage opponents pulled off another victory at the ballot box this week by using a tried-and-tested argument: Approve it and children will be taught homosexuality in school.

I don't know what that means, "taught homosexuality." Like, that it exists? Cause it does.

Here's my favorite part:

In Maine and California, voters were besieged with ad images of what would supposedly happen if same-sex marriage were legal: students going on a field trip to a lesbian wedding, elementary school kids reading books featuring gay couples, kindergartners learning about homosexuality from their teachers — all without any say from parents.

Oh, so that's what it means. I don't see the problem. Of course I don't.

Those advertisements came from these people:

After signing up to lead the campaign, political consultants Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint noticed that polls were showing voters tended to not have much of a problem with gay relationships.

With the help of focus groups, surveys and ammunition unwittingly supplied by their opponents, the two soon found a new way to frame the issue, by focusing on education.

People in marketing very low on the humanity ladder as it is, with them making it their jobs to convince people to buy useless things and poison themselves. But these people, "political consultants", I cannot describe the depth of my hatred for them. It burns inside of me.

They've made it their business (and yes, business is good) to fill people's minds with shit, so that they cannot, or at least they feel that they cannot, make decisions of their own. They thrive on breeding misery, with no apparent compunction.

One on hand you have these salespeople of hatred and ignorance, and on the other, you have a sea of people too fucking stupid to think about anything. Many of them will believe anything that is repeated often enough to them. They are small-minded people, with few thoughtful tendencies. They are deeply reactionary and want nothing more than to maintain what they believe has always been, which generally is based on "God". And they are the majority of Americans. Good luck getting anything progressive by them.

Dear gay people,

We hate you.


Sincerely,

America.

+++++++++

Who's moving forward again? Where's the unity? If there was a ballot initiative against gay people yesterday, it passed. Arizona - gay marriage banned. Arkansas - gay couples banned from adopting children. California - gay marriage banned. Florida - gay marriage banned.

Arizona and Arkansas collectively voted for John McCain. California and Florida collectively voted for Barack Obama. All four voted to enshrine anti-gay sentiments in their constitutions. Obama decidedly won in California, barely won in Florida, and McCain dominated him in Arkansas and Arizona.

Just as many people voted for a president in California as voted one way or the other on the gay marriage ban. Obama won California 61% to McCain's 37%, but the gay marriage ban passed by 52% to 48%. Yes to a black president, no to gay people enjoying their lives and having the same rights as others? What the fuck?