If You're Still Dribbling, It Might Be Time To Pass The Ball, Playa.
I sat here and didn't say one word this entire weekend about the demonstrations last Friday, the silent vigil on Saturday, weekend events or anything else. I couldn't germinate the words necessary to describe how I, and probably everyone else who demonstrated again Love In Action/Refuge has felt over the last few days.
There was Larry who walked down from Love In Action during the afternoon demonstration who came up and introduced himself. "We don't hate you folks, we care about you because that's what we're taught to believe. It's our understanding of Jesus Christ that brought us here," Larry told me. I told him that we don't hate him either, and I listened as he said the words, "The Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and we can't follow in Jesus' path if we behave that way." I quickly reminded him that, "The Bible also says 'Love the sinner and not the sin', or did you conveniently forget that part on your way down the driveway?" I walked off disgusted, trying not to let my feelings cause me to act in a way that would be inexcusable.
There was the guy in the truck with a lawnmower trailer on the back who, in the middle of the afternoon rush hour, took the time to make a u-turn in the middle of the intersection, drive very slowly past demonstrators, rev his motor spewing pollution and exhaust all over them. If he had done it once, it might have been easy to laugh about. But when the same truck drove back and made a u-turn a second time, we thought he was going to drive up on the curb and run someone over. The second time around it was not funny -- it was an act of cowardice by the two men inside that truck, begging us to do something about it. Well, someone did -- they wrote down his license plate number, called the police, and showed the police video footage of the two men's journey into the depths of homophobic behaviour.
With Zach's return, it all started to seem like a wash for many people on the internet, all of whom have been bandying about secret double meanings to his blog entries, trying to figure out what he's about, get inside his head, or whatever people on the internet do when they read stuff. Message boards and forums about the issue, as well as blogs, have been picking apart the minutiae of his writing for weeks, and they treated his first words as if it was a call to arms by their fearless leader.
Several of those people have really lost their fucking minds. They forgot that he is a 16 year old boy, that all he really wanted was for someone to speak out about the program and what they would inevitably be doing inside based on the rules. The ex-gay watch movement existed long before Zach ever appeared on the internet, it's just that people in the massive of world culture were not as aware of its existence -- so he asked some of the people on his friends list to bring it to light. We did. We spoke out, coalitions were formed, media was contacted, people were furious and aggravated as to what was happening.
But even at the beginning, we were all worried that when the media attention to Zach's blog and his story expired, what would become of the movement? Would people abandon it? Hey, what if Zach came out and he was actually ex-gay? What were people going to do?
The movement that exists right now should do so based on the issues, not on the person, as it always has. People have tried repeatedly to make Zach the poster boy for gay civil rights, for the ex-ex-gay movement, for youth rights -- pick something here, everyone glommed onto Zach because he represents the good in all of us being oppressed by something out of his own control.
Because of Zach's few words, in the last two months this story has gone from a small number of blogs to major gay publications, all the way up the journalism chain. To date, a number of major news media have become directly involved in this story. The New YorkTimes, Good Morning America, CNN, Oprah Winfrey requested an interview, TV Globo in Brazil --- we are talking about worldwide coverage. Activism has been awakened in thousands of people who had long since given up the fight. Margaret Cho blogs about it. People around the world are patently aware of what goes on in places like Love In Action now, and it scares, concerns, and outrages them.
But Zach did not sign up to be the poster boy of the movement.
He's not an activist. He's not a martyr or a rebel. He may seem like a symbol to some people, but there's one other thing he is that everyone seems to conveniently forget: he's a 16 year old kid who went through this program so that he could have his childhood.
Instead, without meaning to, everyone involved in pushing his story has outed him to the whole fucking world in the same amount of time it took him to go through this program.
In two days time, people reading his words have gone from supportive and understanding to lividity that their comment was deleted from his blog because, probably, he was VERY overwhelmed by all of this and, at the end of it all, he does not want this to be his life.
Now that we all understand that Zach is not the focus of this any longer, are people all planning to abandon ship on the real issues at hand? I sure hope not -- that's exactly what Love In Action and programs like it want you to do. If you jump ship on it, then they don't have to deal with all the fussing and fighting as they field requests for information from thousands of potential new applicants. They want this to die down so that they can keep operating outside the law, unlicensed, performing reparative therapy which is known to be dangerous, and receiving untold thousands of dollars for it every year. You're totally naive if you don't think people will step up and ask these used car salesmen to help them fix their gay -- they do it all the time, and nobody is doing anything about it.
If you're still thinking about why you're mad at Zach for coming out and not wanting to jump right in and play ball with you, then any attempt at forcing these places to be in compliance with medical standard disappears.
If you're still angry at Zach for deleting the comments that you left on his blog, then your machinations are transparent.
If you're going to sit around and mope because Zach has asked for his privacy, then it's true, after all.
You never cared about what happened to him at all, did you?
Leave Zach alone, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There was Larry who walked down from Love In Action during the afternoon demonstration who came up and introduced himself. "We don't hate you folks, we care about you because that's what we're taught to believe. It's our understanding of Jesus Christ that brought us here," Larry told me. I told him that we don't hate him either, and I listened as he said the words, "The Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and we can't follow in Jesus' path if we behave that way." I quickly reminded him that, "The Bible also says 'Love the sinner and not the sin', or did you conveniently forget that part on your way down the driveway?" I walked off disgusted, trying not to let my feelings cause me to act in a way that would be inexcusable.
There was the guy in the truck with a lawnmower trailer on the back who, in the middle of the afternoon rush hour, took the time to make a u-turn in the middle of the intersection, drive very slowly past demonstrators, rev his motor spewing pollution and exhaust all over them. If he had done it once, it might have been easy to laugh about. But when the same truck drove back and made a u-turn a second time, we thought he was going to drive up on the curb and run someone over. The second time around it was not funny -- it was an act of cowardice by the two men inside that truck, begging us to do something about it. Well, someone did -- they wrote down his license plate number, called the police, and showed the police video footage of the two men's journey into the depths of homophobic behaviour.
With Zach's return, it all started to seem like a wash for many people on the internet, all of whom have been bandying about secret double meanings to his blog entries, trying to figure out what he's about, get inside his head, or whatever people on the internet do when they read stuff. Message boards and forums about the issue, as well as blogs, have been picking apart the minutiae of his writing for weeks, and they treated his first words as if it was a call to arms by their fearless leader.
Several of those people have really lost their fucking minds. They forgot that he is a 16 year old boy, that all he really wanted was for someone to speak out about the program and what they would inevitably be doing inside based on the rules. The ex-gay watch movement existed long before Zach ever appeared on the internet, it's just that people in the massive of world culture were not as aware of its existence -- so he asked some of the people on his friends list to bring it to light. We did. We spoke out, coalitions were formed, media was contacted, people were furious and aggravated as to what was happening.
But even at the beginning, we were all worried that when the media attention to Zach's blog and his story expired, what would become of the movement? Would people abandon it? Hey, what if Zach came out and he was actually ex-gay? What were people going to do?
The movement that exists right now should do so based on the issues, not on the person, as it always has. People have tried repeatedly to make Zach the poster boy for gay civil rights, for the ex-ex-gay movement, for youth rights -- pick something here, everyone glommed onto Zach because he represents the good in all of us being oppressed by something out of his own control.
Because of Zach's few words, in the last two months this story has gone from a small number of blogs to major gay publications, all the way up the journalism chain. To date, a number of major news media have become directly involved in this story. The New YorkTimes, Good Morning America, CNN, Oprah Winfrey requested an interview, TV Globo in Brazil --- we are talking about worldwide coverage. Activism has been awakened in thousands of people who had long since given up the fight. Margaret Cho blogs about it. People around the world are patently aware of what goes on in places like Love In Action now, and it scares, concerns, and outrages them.
But Zach did not sign up to be the poster boy of the movement.
He's not an activist. He's not a martyr or a rebel. He may seem like a symbol to some people, but there's one other thing he is that everyone seems to conveniently forget: he's a 16 year old kid who went through this program so that he could have his childhood.
Instead, without meaning to, everyone involved in pushing his story has outed him to the whole fucking world in the same amount of time it took him to go through this program.
In two days time, people reading his words have gone from supportive and understanding to lividity that their comment was deleted from his blog because, probably, he was VERY overwhelmed by all of this and, at the end of it all, he does not want this to be his life.
Now that we all understand that Zach is not the focus of this any longer, are people all planning to abandon ship on the real issues at hand? I sure hope not -- that's exactly what Love In Action and programs like it want you to do. If you jump ship on it, then they don't have to deal with all the fussing and fighting as they field requests for information from thousands of potential new applicants. They want this to die down so that they can keep operating outside the law, unlicensed, performing reparative therapy which is known to be dangerous, and receiving untold thousands of dollars for it every year. You're totally naive if you don't think people will step up and ask these used car salesmen to help them fix their gay -- they do it all the time, and nobody is doing anything about it.
If you're still thinking about why you're mad at Zach for coming out and not wanting to jump right in and play ball with you, then any attempt at forcing these places to be in compliance with medical standard disappears.
If you're still angry at Zach for deleting the comments that you left on his blog, then your machinations are transparent.
If you're going to sit around and mope because Zach has asked for his privacy, then it's true, after all.
You never cared about what happened to him at all, did you?
Leave Zach alone, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
posted by EJ at 8/02/2005 01:06:00 PM
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