When I posted last night about the death of Kenneth James Weishuhn I knew that the post would not accomplish much and that made me toss and turn all night. This morning Sweet Mother posted an article that gave my anger a name : One Million Moms.
This organization does not contain one million mothers, it only contains about 40,000 of them but they all campaign against gays. And when they go back to being mothers they teach their children the same hatred and bigotry that they spew online. Those children then go to school or they go online and they spread the hatred to their friends. Eventually that culture of hatred finds a victim. Sometimes the victim is strong enough to fight back, or at least ignore the cruelty. Sometimes the victim dies. Like 14 year old Kenneth.
We all know it has to stop. We all say how horrible bullying is but when it comes to bullying victims committing suicide we think that there must have been something else, some weakness at play, some fatal flaw for which the bullying is just a trigger. After all, words can’t kill.
I used to think that but in reading more about Kenneth’s death I discovered that words can kill when they are accompanied by the kind of hatred that was directed towards this young boy. Hatred that can send the bullies to the funeral and make them say they’re glad that he is dead is no ordinary hatred. It’s not a game. It’s not just kids ‘teasing’. This is real, inbred, homegrown HATE. The kind of hate that would kill if it dared.
Yet where does this level of hate with a capital ‘H’ come from? You guessed it : from people like One Million Moms. Well this mum is about to tell those ‘moms’ that they are evil with a capital ‘E’.
If you are a mum and if you love your children and if you believe that all children have a right to live then please join me in condemning these women. Even if we only make one ‘mom’ change her mind that is a start. That is one less source of hate. One less family spewing bigotry into the world. And maybe it will mean one less child dying.
Enough is enough.
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NANO 2012
April 25th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
I’m a father and happily join you in condemning these women and the men who create this feeding frenzy of hate by what they teach their children. They should all be ashamed of themselves for killing this child because that’s what they did even if they didn’t physically push, stab or shoot a victim. Then they can go off to Church on Sunday and pretend to be good people but who have ignored the live and let live message that Jesus preached. I don’t exclude other religions from this responsibility either if they continue to spout such terrible untruths in their sermons and any preacher found condemning gays isn’t fit to wear the cloth. Love, understanding and acceptance of people’s differences is the way the world should go unless we want to degenerate into the kind of world Hitler tried to bring about.
Well done Meeka for speaking out.
April 25th, 2012 at 6:52 pm
God yes! I’ve just begun to grapple with the deeper implications and you’ve put it into a few neat sentences. It starts with one child but the ripples extend right out into every facet of our society. Is this really the world we want to create? I pray that it’s not.
April 26th, 2012 at 12:42 am
I totally agree with you, Acflory. Of all people, mothers spreading hatred toward children and youth is the most revolting. This is not freedom of speech, this is inciting to murder, and these women are killers. There is no other name for them.
April 26th, 2012 at 10:04 am
-hugs- thank you. I wish there were more of you around.
April 26th, 2012 at 11:12 am
There are many of us who feel this way. The problem is, as usuall, is that the hatemongers are more vocal and get their message across. But here in the U.S. there is a huge movement against bullying and threatening children just because they are different from what these bigots think is the only way to live. These are complicated times and the bigots lash out when they don’t understand the way things are changing — but they will not win.
April 26th, 2012 at 11:25 am
Complicated times indeed. I hear what you are saying about the bigots being the most vocal. I guess that’s why the rest of us are called the silent majority. I understand why we remain silent yet it still makes me angry. Perhaps this child’s death will start something because just at the moment ‘they’ are winning