The Northwest Arkansas Pride Parade has named for its grand marshal a 10-year-old boy, Will Phillips. You might recognize the name. He was in the news for awhile some months back, for publicly refusing to stand and recite the pledge on the grounds that the "liberty and justice for all" is a lie, since LGBT people/couples/families are denied legal equality - despite pressure from his teacher, principal, and classmates. An awesome and brave kid, you'd think, right?
Not if you're the American [White, Christian, Straight, Married] Family Association. And for once, it's not even Bryan fucking Fischer! The level of asshattery is about the same, though. Anyway, the Pride parade is honoring this kid for his courage in the cause, and what does the AFA call that?
Child abuse.
No, I'm not kidding. The AFA sent an e-blast to their groupies today that included this passage:
‘It’s shameful that adults would abuse a brain-washed child in this way,’ said AFA president Tim Wildmon. ‘He’s obviously just parroting the nonsense he’s been told by manipulative adults. For gay activists to trot out this child and make him the poster child for promoting unnatural sexual expression is a form of child abuse.Um, wow. Seriously? You know, there are women's-clinic protesters who bring their children with them to harass, chase, wave signs at, and scream at women accessing reproductive health services. Read the everysaturdaymorning blog. Numerous stories, with pictures, of parents bringing their children - many younger than Will's 10 years - out into freezing cold weather, ass-early in the morning, to protest, often without decent protection from the elements. They tell of one woman who likes to hold out her infant toward the women, walking backwards in front of them down the sidewalk. I don't see the AFA condemning these people, these "manipulative adults" bringing out their "brain-washed children" and making them the "poster children for promoting unnatural hatred of women", for the "child abuse" they're perpetrating. Wonder why that is...?
Listen, by age 10 a child should have at least a reasonable ability to conduct independent reasoning and begin questioning the beliefs of the adults around hir. (I know that was about the age I started asking questions that got me in trouble. ;-) ) And you know these people would pitch a gigantor fit if anyone said they were "brainwashing" their children into believing in God/Jesus/conservatism/w'ev! So what the hell is up with this assumption that Phillips is "brainwashed" because he supports an ideology different from theirs?
And let's not forget, these are the people affiliated with some of the "teachers" at Porno Pete LaBarbera's Gay Hate Camp for Kids. So it's fine to brainwash kids to be anti-gay, outright and openly "training" them to "combat the lies of the homosexual agenda"...but gods forbid a kid decides on his own that gay people are ok and maybe we should treat them better, because then he's a brainwashed poster child for teh buttsecks and that's a form of child abuse.
Of course, all this is merely ideological prelude to pointing out the base, simple fact that this asshole is appropriating child abuse to describe a child's lack of hatred toward gay people. I imagine *actual* survivors of *actual* child abuse - you know, the kind that involves neglect, emotional torture, physical violence, sexual violence, all those kinds of things - might have a thing or two to say about the difference between FUCKING CHILD ABUSE and a child being pro-gay-rights. These things are not equivalent, and it is exceedingly, deeply, and in all ways wrong and offensive to conflate the two.
This rates more than the usual WTF. This calls for something with more fuck.
What the allfucking retrofuck?
