What a beautiful child, and it seems he was beautiful on the inside too. Rest in peace Carl.

With my kids, I have seen that in some popular entertainment aimed at young people, there has been a kind of stealth retrenchment against gay people in our culture, mostly passed off as “edgy”, “politically incorrect” humor.

For example, South Park (whose writer/creators, as many people are unaware, are in fact political conservatives) has popularized the use of the word “gay” as an adjective for anything deemed inadequate or uncool. All of the characters, not just the less sympathetic ones like Cartman, constantly use the word in this manner.

Thus, even as our political culture is moving towards greater legal acceptance of gfay people, popular culture encourages a brutal contempt for gays — though stripped of old-fashioned, prudish horror. It’s not the old fifties fear of homosexuality as a quasi-satanic, exotic vice. Now gay people are accepted as a normal, but inferior, part of the social order. The South Park youth culture attitude is, “So you’re gay. Big deal. We’re not shocked, and we’re not offended; don’t flatter yourself to think that we’re so easily impressed. No, you’re not some exotic outlaw — but we do regard you as rather ridiculous and inferior.”

It seems to me that for young gay (or gay-seeming) kids, this kind of contemptuous “acceptance” is in practice probably as hard to bear as any of the earlier forms of intolerance and mistreatment directed at homosexuals.

Where were the school authorities who allowed this to take place… repeatedly?  It appears they turned a blind eye towards this bullying.  Could it be that they privately endorsed it?

These bullies, or rather young children are getting the message somewhere that this is “ok”.  Children of this age are easily swayed and will push the limits that they are allowed.  On the other hand, they are usually more open to direction and tend to accept authority when it is given.  I don’t see this as an incrimination of these children as much as I see it as an incrimination of the adults who should have taken action to stop it.

Meanwhile we have whole CHANNELS devoted to endorsing this hate speech and inciting these ideologues.  Encouraging them to speak out and take ACTION (or in this case, non-action) against gays, liberals and ethnic groups.  Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Dobbs, Beck, the Pope, Westboro Baptist, Dobson, Falwell, Gingrich ....etc….. yes, some people have “gotten” their message.

This young boy is now dead and the issue here isn’t something that a group of ELEVEN YEAR OLDS invented.  The governments latest report highlights this well.  From Glenn Greenwald @ Salon:

“Right-wing polemicists today are shrieking in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Department of Homeland Security sent to local police forces which warns of growing “right-wing extremist activity.”  The report (.pdf) identifies attributes of these right-wing extremists, warning that a growing domestic threat of violence and terrorism “may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration” and “groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

That does not deserve a response.

you know, if we killed these bullies, maybe, just maybe, the remainder of them would get the idea that we don’t like their behavior.