Expect More: A Soapbox Response to a News Article and the Comment that Followed

I guess it is time for me to get up on my soapbox about a comment that was made to a link I saw in my News Feed on Facebook. The article was through Edge Media Network and is about a lawsuit that was filed Tuesday in Mississippi and the lawsuit says gay students are being bullied in a southern Mississippi school district. This bullying included a lesbian student made to sit alone in the class when the other students were split into boys and girls. (The article can be found at this link: http://www.edgeonthenet.com/news/national/News//153237/lawsuit:_gay_students_bullied_in_miss_district .)

While the information in this article and the act of bullying in any way are despicable, there was a comment to the link, in which Ms. Landry commented, saying, "I live in Mississippi & I love my state but honestly you can't expect much from a state that still holds KKK conventions! If Blacks can't have respect in 2013 why expect that for LGBT?" There are two things I find erroneous about this comment. The first is that we can indeed expect more from the people of Mississippi who are engaging in such horrendous bullying tactics. Just because the KKK conventions are being held does not mean that we cannot expect more. Expecting less is the reason this bullying warfare (yes, warfare because the students being bullied are bombarded with assault after assault) continues to go on in school districts. Expecting less of the teachers who allow this cruelty to continue is the exact reason bullying continues in the school districts. Expecting less of the parents is the reason the children aren't held to a higher standard when they are in a public forum. Expecting less of the kids in the school and not asking for more respect and decorum in schools is the very reason bullying continues. And finally, expecting the bullied students to just sit back and take it because the teachers, parents and the school district will do nothing to protect them is despicable and should never be expected of them simply because they live in a district that continues to hold KKK conventions.

Finally, stating that because we are in the year 2013 and other's can't expect any respect then why should the LGBT community. Stating that it is the year 2013 does not give any credence to the idea that we are in a civilized world. The year has nothing to do with the mindset of the people...obviously! Also, the LGBT community, the Black community, and every other community can indeed expect respect. It is a right given to us simply by being. And if the communities think because they are Christian that gives them the right to treat others as though they are lesser beings, these same Christian communities need to revisit their Bibles and the words of Christ. Even Christ would not judge the harlot when she was brought before him. If Christ and his words, which are the very essences of Christianity, will not judge a harlot and also state, "Love they neighbor as thyself," what makes it okay for someone to treat LGBT kids or Black people any less than Christ would treat them? Perhaps, they need to rethink their affiliations with Christianity. The message of Christ is love and has nothing to do with color, gender, or sexual identity. Just love! So, no matter what century we are in and no matter what race, gender, sexual identity, or any other thing that identifies us as different, we can indeed expect more. We, in fact, need to expect more or we will, in the end, destroy ourselves.

Expect more of each other. Expect love from your neighbors and your teachers. Expect change from school districts. Expect more! We are all a part of the great human race and simply because we are different from on another does not give anyone the right to treat us as though we are lesser. We all breath. We all love. We all live. And to do nothing and expect nothing is one of the greater sins. Is it not?

Namaste. 

Mistakes in the Schoolyard Kingdom

Tonight, I want to acknowledge a mistake in my past. I don't do it because I seek forgiveness for my offense. I don't do it to show growth or to seek any public acceptance or acknowledgement. I do it out of necessity for me. I recently came to the knowledge of my mistake, my sin, my error and I want to acknowledge it and apologize.

When I was at Helper Junior High School, I was bullied verbally and psychologically. I know I have already talked about this in previous writings and my own bullying, obviously, is not the mistake I made. However, as a result of my own bullying, I, in turn, became a bully. To take away from my own pain, I joined in the verbal cruelty and assault of a classmate. This is my sin; I became the bully.

I don't remember her name, but I remember the circumstance. Whenever we walked passed her in class we would talk about how she stunk. We would talk about how, when she walked, she would drop feces down her pant leg. We would grimace and sneer and then plug our noses. My classmates and I would do everything we could to belittle her.

I always felt guilty for joining in with my classmates in making fun of her, but if I joined in, my classmates wouldn't focus their attentions on me. It was a survival of the fittest in the Schoolyard Kingdom. If I wanted the attention diverted from me and if I no longer wanted to be called fag, queer, or fudge packer, the rules dictated that I follow suite in making fun of someone else less fortunate than the rest of the class. She was less fortunate than everyone and therefore won the ridicule of everyone else.

She had poorly washed and poorly manufactured clothes. Due to what reasons, I could only guess. However, her standing as a lower class student on the lowest rungs of the totem pole were established, not because of who she was as a person, but how she appeared on the outside to everyone else. The pages of her book may have been filled with beauty and a kind heart, but superficiality rules in the Schoolyard Kingdom; her book was judged by its cover. And everyone treated her like a secondhand paperback.

My sin was committed daily for two years. I can't say enough "Hail Mary's" to wash away the dirty hands of mine that committed my sins; my mouth cannot be cleansed with soap enough for the cruelties it spoke to the young woman who received judgment for how she looked rather than who she was. I cannot apologize enough for any pain I could have caused her, but if I could, I would try to do penance to her.

So, tonight, I acknowledge my mistakes, errors, and sins committed in the Schoolyard Kingdom. To the girl that received so much cruelty that I played any part in, I am sorry. I seek no forgiveness because I don't think it is merited. But I want to acknowledge my sin and pray that I never repeat it again.

Bullying is such a cyclical malady that has infected the Schoolyard Kingdom. Kids that are bullied at home come to school to be the bully. The kids bullied at school join in the bullying of someone else to alleviate the severity of their own bullying and so on and on and on. The disease is so infectious and can only be cured when the bullied refuse to bully someone else; when the bullied refuse to continue the cycle, the cycle is broken for a moment. Though this is a lot to ask from the members of court in the Schoolyard Kingdom.

As an adult, I am able to look back because I am free from the reign of the kings and queens in the Kingdom. I am able to see my sins and acknowledge them. I am able to see and accept my accountability and refuse to continue the cycle today.

In William J. Mann's Where the Boys Are, in regards to accountability, he writes, "The first step to enlightenment is recognizing our own accountability" (408). Perhaps, in seeing passed my past and acknowledge the part I played in the Schoolyard Kingdom, I take a step towards enlightenment. But I think there are many other steps to take. One at a time. Namaste.

I Dream Dreams

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.,  a great man who was one of the spearheads of the Civil Rights Movement and gave his life for that movement, I have been given a chance this month to dream my own dreams. I have seen the great movings of progress in our nation once again and I've seen the efforts to stifle that movement, keeping the progress stagnant; I have seen great movements for the progress to move backward. I have seen heads held high with pride and heads hidden in fear and shame. I have seen pain and have seen joy. Through it all, I have seen dreamers continually dreaming. So, I too have dreams.

I have a dream that one day marriage will not be determined by which sex you marry, but by the love you share. I have a dream that love be demonstrated from coast to coast through simple and big acts. I have a dream that my children and future generations will be able to show the world that who they love is not something of which to be ashamed. I have a dream that with their partners' hands in theirs, they can walk with heads held high and show the world how deep their love is.

I have a dream that people will identify one another as human beings and not place each other in identifiable boxes that separate each of us, rather than unify us. I have a dream that we can each share the aspects of ourselves rather than hide in the dark closets we have built for ourselves. I have a dream that with heads held high, people can be proud of who they are and not hide in shame and fear.

I have a dream that each child can walk to school without fear of violence and without fear of being bullied. Schools should be places for learning, not fearing and hiding. I have a dream that students feel like they have a place to go where their opinions matter and they are accepted for who they are and not in what box they have been identified. I have a dream that fear does not play a part in their lives.

I have a dream that the men and women who serve this country will continue to protect us, but that they will come home safe from a war that seems so futile. I dream a dream of peace and life free from corruption. I dream a dream of love over hate; love becoming the ruler of our minds and hearts. I dream of safe schools and zero tolerance for violence and bullying. I dream of peace and love. I continue dreaming dreams.

This Grudge

I hold grudges. This is not new, nor is it newsworthy, but it has recently become more evident as I think about my childhood and why I feel, about the Church, the way I do, that I am holding a grudge against the Church and God. The Church, which is actually used to signify the Holy Roman Catholic Church, but in this sense, I mean the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been like a sibling who needs all the attention and leaves the other kids wanting for affection from my father.

Before I keep going, I want all to know, who read this, that I love my father. I want that to be understood. He is a good man and a great example of what a man is and how that man should treat the ones he loves. He has always treated my mother like a queen and a goddess. When we disrespected her, in anyway, her only punishment for us was the mere mention of telling our father and we immediately apologized. I think fear of the wrath of a father is a pretty common childhood threat. And although he never actually struck us or physically hurt us, we were still afraid of him. Perhaps, afraid is not the right word because it leaves no room for the respect we had for him, but I will use afraid for now.

Now, getting back to my original subject of the Church and its status as a needy sibling, I will explain what I mean. When I was born, my dad was Bishop of our ward in Richfield, Utah. A bishop is the leader of a specific group of the flock (I use flock because Jesus said he is a shepherd and we are his sheep) within the city and he is under the Stake President, the Quorum of the Seventy, the Quorum of the twelve, and the prophet and President of the Church. A Bishop's job is never done. My dad was always at the church dealing with confessions of sin, activities with the youth, Sunday meetings that seemed to last all day, and so on. Because of my age and my need for the comfort of my mother, most of the time the absence of my father, at that point in my life, was only partially noticed.

The calling of Bishop doesn't seem like much, but I forgot to mention that my dad was a seminary teacher for the Church Education System (CES). A seminary teacher teaches the youth of the Church on more in-depth conversations of the Bible (The Old and New Testaments), The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price and the teachings of the latter-day prophets. My dad was gone all day with his job working for the Church and then, after dinner, would do his duties as the Bishop.

My younger, hungrier sibling, the Church, was not satisfied with this sacrifice and, soon, demanded more of my dad's time. During the first few weeks of summer, my dad, with other seminary teachers, began to take buses of high school graduates on tours of Church historical sites like Nauvoo, Carthage Jail, Kirtland, and the Sacred Grove, the site where Joseph Smith had his vision of God and Jesus Christ, telling him about the true church and his role in bringing it about in the latter-days. So, my dad became seminary teacher, Bishop, and tour guide for my hungry, needy sibling.

Every once in a while, there would seem to be a reprieve and the Church seemed well fed and sated, but the rumblings of the Church's belly began to ache with hunger and need. My dad, after being released as Bishop, was called to the position of Stake President of the Richfield Utah Stake. He was in charge of all the members of the Church in Richfield.

The Stake President was just a check in the balance of protecting the souls of God's children. When the sin was big enough that the Bishop couldn't take care of it within the power given him by God, he sought the advice of the Stake President, his counselors, and the High Council (a council of men within the stake chosen by God to overlook important matters.) So, the Stake President was needed much more often than the Bishop because his flock was much larger. Also, because the flock was human and always sinning.

My dad, therefore, was gone from dawn to nine o'clock at night. And my sibling, the Church was still very needy, but I had reached the point in my life where my mother's affection, though still important, was not enough for a growing boy. I needed my dad and, on the rare occasion that the Church didn't require him, got the chance to receive his affection.

However, I think now would be a good time to say that my family does not consist of me, the Church, and my parents. My actual breathing siblings consists of seven older siblings, Loren, Marci, Kirsti, Josh, Adam, Beth, and Kim, and two younger siblings, Jaclyn and Stephen. We are, what many people in Utah call, a stereotypical "Big Mormon Family." In fact, when people hear the size of my family, they always ask, "Did your parents not own a TV?" Anyway, not only was the affection of my father being vied for by my mom and the Church, but also my nine siblings. His affection, all to myself, was very hard to come by back then. He is a great man, but I'm afraid he couldn't work miracles and create more time in a day to give each one of us time alone with him.

My dad, the Stake President, husband, father, teacher, tour guide, and devoted Christian to the Church, gave what time he could to his family, but the hungry, needy Church required more and more and more. When I was turning twelve, the Church decided it needed more from my dad and gave him a promotion. I know what some might be thinking, "Geez kid, stop complaining. Your dad got a promotion with better pay to take care of you." I should have been happy he was promoted to Area Director of Seminaries and Institutes in South Eastern Utah, from Vernal down to Moab, and his office was in Price, Utah. I should have been happy, but my own personal hell was lived in that town. Often, I felt very much alone.

My family was uprooted from my home and birthplace, Richfield, to be moved to the armpit of Utah aka (well, at least to me) Hell on Earth. The most formative years of my life were spent in utter misery due to bullying and what appeared to be the absence of my father because the Church required him to travel a lot. Price is where my grudge and resentment towards the Church began. I did my best to survive Price and the bullying and still believe the Church's truth and importance in my life. However, the Church's stance on gays allowed me to loathe myself and the Church's demand for so much of my father's attention and affection made me a jealous person. My grudge had developed into a callus and a distrust of the Church, its teachings/doctrines, and the leaders of the Church, which demanded so much of my father when I needed him most.

Perhaps, now that I understand the formations and beginnings of this resentment that festers within me, I can learn to let it go. I can go forward and form new opinions of myself and the Church. I can learn not to cringe when I hear the prophet speak and learn not to cringe when my parents say that they know someday I will come back into the Church's arms and teachings. And perhaps, I can learn not to base my views of myself from experiences many years ago. I can stop loathing myself because the Church, that I once loved, taught it's flock that I am an abomination in the eyes of a God. Perhaps I can stop hating the Church and God who took my father from me to serve Him. Perhaps I can let go and stop allowing others, or the Church's opinions, affect me and my own opinions of me.

Perhaps...

Sticks and Stones

Do you remember the rhyme that states, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?" What a world it would be if words really never hurt you. The thing many people don't understand is words may not be physically as painful as a kick to the gut or a fist to the face, but words can be just as damaging, if not more damaging to the receiver.

Fat, fatty, sissy, pussy, faggot, worthless, stupid, and other playground names may seem harmless or they may make the person yelling them feel better, but the problem with the words is that the person being bullied, after so long, begins to believe that they are worthless or stupid because they've heard it enough; the brain begins to believe that what it hears is truth and the bullied kid begins to see himself/herself as stupid, fat, sissy etc.

Even as a thirty-one year old gay man, because of my experience at Helper Junior High School in Helper, Utah, I can look in the mirror and the words that were used to attack me, unbidden, come to my mind. I begin to think of myself as worthless and fat. I call myself fag or faggot with the same hatred with which the words were spewed at me. A beautiful day, in the blink of an eye, is turned into a bleak existence of self-hate and self-deprecation. The bleak days turn to prayers to God to end my miserable existence because of a few words that weren't supposed to hurt me.

I wish I could say that the days get better as you get older (perhaps some days do, but I am never without feeling inadequate) and I wish I could say that ignoring the awful opinions of others becomes easy, but I can't completely tell anyone that it does become easy with better days. The days still turn bleak. My prayers often turn to pleas for the world to end. However, the key to controlling your thoughts is remembering that you can change what your mind is telling you WHO are, to you telling yourself WHO you are; the memories no longer control your perception of you, but you control your own perception. And finally, bleak days turn into clearer skies with the occasional dark cloud blotting out the sun.

Words do hurt, but we can make them sting less. We can give the words less power over us, but practice and time are the remedy. For now, just brush the words off your shoulder and tell yourself that you are beautiful.

Mirror, Mirror

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" said the Queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To which, the Magic Mirror responds that the Queen is the fairest in the land. What if each of us had a mirror that told us we were the most beautiful and fair, ignoring obvious flaws i.e. fat, moles, glasses and any other physical flaw that is seen as ugly or undesirable? Hopefully,  we would leave our houses feeling beautiful and proud.

In Junior High, I was a victim of bullying. I struggled everyday with other kids calling me fag, faggot, queer, fudge packer, cocksucker, etc. You name it and they called me anything that equated with being gay or being a sissy. The students hurled the barrage of cruel and demeaning names. Most of the time, I didn't have any idea what they were talking about. Through all of the name calling and bullying, I suffered and suffered.

While the bullying was mostly verbal and psychological, the emotional toll, those years took on me, has stayed with me and the wounds fester. The memories are a constant scab I continually pick at and make them bleed. No matter how much council I seek, I find the memories too strong and painful to always overcome.

What I wouldn't give to have my own Magic Mirror to tell me how fair and beautiful I am. Perhaps, the daily positive verbalization would help to destroy the negative memories that are always inside my head telling me that because I am gay, I am a second class citizen and deserve nothing this world has to offer me or that I deserve to be called names. If I had the Magic Mirror, the religious me would stop saying, "You're going to go to hell if you kill yourself and you're going to go to hell for being gay, so you might as well get it over with and kill yourself."

Bullying is a modern-day warfare tactic that is not waged with guns and bombs, but with words that could kill by bringing the bullied to take their own lives. It is a plague that emotionally and psychologically damages and destroys. It is amazing how many types of bullying there are today. Schoolyard bullying was the only bullying that I experienced, but today, I fear for the youth because of all the social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) that allow kids to bully from wherever they are. Zero tolerance in schools and on the social networking sites needs to be implemented, so that people understand that it is not okay to make others feel like they are unimportant and that life is not worth living. Stop the hate. Stop the violence. Stop the bullying.