Students at a Pennsylvania high school held an “Anti-Gay Day” protest on Thursday, wearing coordinated flannel shirts, writing “anti-gay” on their hands, and sticking Bible verses on LGBT students’ lockers…. “We came in to school on Thursday and found a lot of people wearing flannel and we couldn’t figure out why,” Zoe Johnson, a 16-year-old bisexual student at McGuffey High School in Claysville, told BuzzFeed News. “People started getting pushed and notes were left on people’s lockers.”…. The anti-gay protest occurred a day after students with the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) held a “Day of Silence,” an event aimed at drawing attention to anti-gay bullying…. [T}he event was met with no resistance on Wednesday, but roughly 50 students took part in a counter-protest on Thursday and Friday…. “They had a very silent, respectful day of action, and then they came to school on Thursday to an organized backlash,” Kathy Cameron, chair of the board of directors of the Washington County Gay Straight Alliance, told BuzzFeed News…. “The instigators, the bullies, seemed to be very proud of their efforts, and posted many smiling pictures online,” Cameron said.
It’s been said that bigots aren’t born, they’re created. Hatred isn’t innate; one doesn’t come out of the womb hating others. One learns to hate by watching the behavior and listening to the words of their parents and other adults in their lives. Though love is far easier to learn- and far more pleasant to live with- hate, once learned, possesses an insidious staying power. It corrodes and degrades whatever it comes into contact with. Once instilled in a person’s value system, it can have a very long-term corrosive effect on a person’s heart. It can harden their view of the world and the people who inhabit it. Other human beings are separated- cataloged and divided from “real” people (those like themselves, of course)- and assigned value based on their adherence to a particularly quality or set of qualities (religious/political beliefs, sexuality, nationality, language, etc.).
What children learn- be it to love or hate others- is not something which suddenly and randomly appears for indeterminate reasons. They learn behaviors and beliefs by watching the adults in their lives. When children see hatred modeled and homophobia modeled on a regular basis, they’ll eventually begin to reflect what they’ve learned- that White Conservative heterosexual Christians are the Chosen Ones. They’ll internalize and act on the conviction that The Other- those who don’t live, love, and believe as they do- is an insidious force out to destroy all they believe to be good and holy. The Other is to be feared and hated for being different, because they desire nothing more than to forcibly convert you to their belief system. And they Must. Be. Stopped.
The haters at McGuffey High School didn’t suddenly begin hating LGBT students; they were taught to hate. In their natural environment and absent undue influence, children will accept and get along with one another without creating divisions based on artificial constructs. Whether they learned hatred through omission or commission, their parents and other adults and authority figures in their lives are largely responsible for the ugly, mean-spirited people they’ve become. Instead of modeling love, tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion, they’ve taught their children that being different is bad, and that those who are different are worthy only of harassment and destruction.
If children are the future, it would be easy to think that this might be a good time to begin fearing for that future. We might also begin to ask why we choose to teach our children to hate instead of showing them that a life filled with love, tolerance, and acceptance of others can be far more pleasant and enjoyable.