This is right down the road from me in the portion of PA that is frequently described as the Alabama portion of Pennsylvania when referring to the old quip that “Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh in the west, Philly in the east, and Alabama in the middle”:
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.
“I got called a dyke, a faggot,” Johnson said. “They were calling us every horrible name you can think of.”
The best case scenario is that some adults came up with this shitty and awful idea, and not the kids themselves, because it would be truly awful to think that kids this young are bigots on their own. I drive down RT. 70 right near this several times a week.
NobodySpecial
Just to let you know, something broke the italics tag.
boatboy_srq
The kids likely did this themselves – but reacting to stereotypes the adults push. Youngsters can be cruel in ways adults only imagine.
OTOH, there’s no “gay uniform,” flannel is pretty common in LGBT wardrobes, and that grouping looks like they’d be welcome at the nearest bear bar. If only they knew…
Punchy
So flannel represents anti-gay now? When did this happen?
Why are their faces blurred out? Old enough to practice bigotry but too young to be identified for it?
Pee Cee
By the time kids reach high school, many of them are full-blown bigots. This sort of thing doesn’t really surprise me at all.
kc
Kids that age, and even younger, can be incredibly cruel.
TaMara (BHF)
My first thought, too, was, why are their faced blurred. Are they ashamed of their bigotry? I mean if you’re bold enough to wear a “bigotry uniform” to school, tape hateful messages to lockers and call people hateful names, you should be proud and happy to publicize it.
scav
Christian Kindness and Charity certainly does not hide itself under a basket but shines out, illuminating that City on a Hill, no? Makes one feel O! so much better to be here and not under some theologically inspired system of oppression and coercive social control.
boatboy_srq
@TaMara (BHF): @Punchy: I’m hoping JC did the blurring. Though blurring the poster’s handle would probably be a good idea as well, in that case (hint hint).
Woodrowfan
@TaMara (BHF): they’re underage. that’s standard practice on news sites for those under 18. (the notable exception is victims of crimes)
mattminus
BJ really has the “kids saying dumb shit” beat all sewn up, huh?
satby
Yeah, high school kids are already solid in whatever bigotry they may have spent their childhood marinating in. And they seldom want to be known outside their little circle for it.
germy shoemangler
Wow! High school bullies have really upped their game since my day…
mattH
Someone should have asked them if they were going to start singing the Lumber Jack Song.
germy shoemangler
out of curiosity, I took a look at the facebook page of one of my biggest middle school/high school bullies. His profile photo… a picture of him (and three of his buddies) from high school!
So great to peak at age 18.
Tokyokie
They’re high school kids whose primary ambition is remaining in good standing with their clique, and when one of their leaders suggests they do something bigoted and evil, they don’t have the character to resist. Peer pressure can be a bitch, but it will help them become good Republicans in a short while.
Svensker
Where’d you go to high school? The Twilight Zone? Kids that age can be incredibly idealistic…and incredibly narrow-minded, bigoted, cruel. You don’t see a lot of bullying in grad school, you know.
Tenar Darell
I read that story. /sigh It appears like these kids are going to have to scrub their high school years before college or work.
boatboy_srq
@mattH: They’re saving that for tomorrow, when they go shopping and have buttered scones for tea.
Gin & Tonic
@germy shoemangler: When I left high school I closed the door and never looked back. I haven’t set foot on the grounds or had any contact with anyone in my class since then.
OzarkHillbilly
@Punchy:
Only manly men like Lumberjacks where flannel.
Olivia
They coordinated their flannel???
scav
@OzarkHillbilly: I was thinking an ironic Bears of the Month Calendar contestant, but I don’t think they’ve realistically got a chance on merit except as ironic.
Woodrowfan
that’s left to some of the profs…
OzarkHillbilly
I had forgotten all about this.
cmorenc
I’M A LUMBERJACK, AND I’M OK….
beltane
High schoolers can be just, if not more, bigoted as anyone else. If anything, their youth allows them to be a little more open about their true feelings. Once people join the workforce/adult life, they generally learn to keep their thoughts to themselves.
msdc
Dude, they’re high school students. Of course they can be bigots on their own.
If there’s a silver lining, I guess it’s that this kind of homophobia was once so universal that it didn’t need special “days” to assert itself – it’s only kicking and making a fuss now that it’s embattled. (See also: every Tea Partier ever.) Still sucks for the non-asshole kids in that school, though.
Germy Shoemangler
@Gin & Tonic: I did pretty much the same thing. What amazed me when I peeked at my classmate’s facebook is that all the bullies kept/keep in touch! I saw names I hadn’t remembered in years!
High school bullies nowadays have a whole new array of superpowers, what with facebook and instagram and twitter. My circa-1974 alpha jocks were primitive cave dwellers by comparison.
And my 1970s teachers got away with murder! I remember one highschool math teacher joking “send him a letter to the dead letter office” after a classmate was killed in an accident. If he tried that shit nowadays it would be national news.
scav
@Woodrowfan: Some of the between sub-disciplinary stuff can get nasty. Rock v. Digital v. Pomo/Marxist/Feminist infighting can be lively, and I was never privy to the fractal fratricidal warfare waged among that last category.
OzarkHillbilly
@mattH: Dayum Matt, beat me to it.
Aimai
This is what fred clark at slactivist calls “the persecuted hegemon”–a person, or group, that simultaneously believes they are superior in values, worth, morals, behaviors, nature, size, and historicsl significance but also that they are weak, threatened, vulnerable, under attack, and insulted by a yet bigger majority that is a minority/unnnatural.
The idealized hegemon position legitimizes their contempt for the other group, the persecution fantasy makes every evil act they do understood as a mere justified reaction to the minority’s previous “hostile”act.
Comrade Dread
Well, they’ve probably heard from adults that gays are a sign of the moral degeneracy of America, an abomination, looking for special rights, trying to persecute good Christian businesspeople, etc. At least, if they or their parents have been to any conservative churches or listened to Fox News/RW Radio at all, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they came up with this on their own.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if at least half of them weren’t deeply ashamed of doing this once they reach their 30’s or 40’s.
Germy Shoemangler
@Comrade Dread: It also wouldn’t surprise me if at least half of them weren’t deeply ashamed of doing this once they reach their 30’s or 40’s.
You are a generous soul. I would have predicted that half of them would chuckle about it and the other half would have no recollection.
Keith G
You never taught in a high school, did ya?
IMO (backed by research) bigotry against the “other” is part of the natural state. It is up to the educational process (parental and communal, informal and formal) to override such tendencies and, if such lessons aren’t learned, to remediate with appropriate sanctions.
Of course, when mixed message are given by the community of elders….
Edit
@Germy Shoemangler:
I will be more supportive of Dread’s view. When I have had a chance to visit with the older version if students who had been in my classes, I am usually quite happy at the progress they have made once out of adolescence.
Usually.
Peale
@msdc: yep. Also, too…way to prove the point why a day of silence is still nescrssary.
Woodrowfan
@scav: I know, yeech. what’s the old line about the politics in academia being so vicios because the stakes are low? If it means not getting tenure then the stakes can be very high personally.
Yatsuno
@Comrade Dread:
Fixteth. High school is not the real world. When people are required to face the reality beyond it it’s amazing how things change.
Related: at least 1 of those pictured is themselves gay. I’d bet a fiver on it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Yatsuno: Remember Mitt’s reaction when he was reminded of his torturing a classmate? First he didn’t remember, then as the memories returned he gave a little chuckle. “Oh yeah, we were a wild and fun-loving bunch, weren’t we? I’m sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings”
Svensker
@Woodrowfan:
I was shocked at the vicious infighting in academe. Wow. Still, not the same as bullying. Humans got all kinda ways to go after each other, don’t we?
Comrade Dread
@Germy Shoemangler: It took me until my 20’s and meeting actual gay people to realize that gay folks weren’t moral degenerates or abominations.
It took me until my 30’s (and meeting and befriending more gay folks) to realize that weren’t sinners for being gay and that gay marriage wasn’t a special right, but a human one that they desired to have so they could build their own families and find happiness.
And I am deeply ashamed of those times when I tried to preach religion to gay folks in my late teens and early 20’s. And if anyone here happened to be one of the folks I preached at, I’m deeply sorry. You deserved better. You deserved more love and compassion and empathy from your fellow man than I gave you at the time.
Gin & Tonic
@Germy Shoemangler: There are 8 guys in that group. What are the odds that in the fullness of time, one of them finds he prefers the intimate company of another man?
NotMax
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught
– “South Pacific”
Lee
@Yatsuno:
Absolutely. I remember reading that a person changes the most in their life between the ages 18-25. This is when they become the person they will be. This is also why being married young is so difficult and the divorce rate for young marriages is so high.
bemused
They can don plaid flannel shirts all they want but these guys are definitely not lumbersexuals.
Germy Shoemangler
@Gin & Tonic: The guy on the far right in the acid-washed jeans?
scav
@Gin & Tonic: Factoring in over-compensation to “fit in”? @Germy Shoemangler: And of course people would go for the jeans-watch. I’d a friend who’s first clue was always the fit of same, only he was ever the eternal optimist.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh and for the record, I remember laughing at and cracking every damn gay/n***er/spic/kike/dyke/ etc etc joke that came around the smoking area in 74-76. Even the ones I didn’t think were funny, tho the truth be told, I thought more than a few of them were funny. On the day I graduated, my education began in earnest.
I suspect the same is true for more than a few of these kids.
Violet
What everyone else has said–kids are cruel. They learn bigotry at home but they put it into practice themselves. Some of it is peer pressure. They are terrified of not fitting in so they end up doing all sorts of thing.
Most likely at least one of the guys in that picture is gay.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Do you not remember any part of your life before age 30? Of course the kids came up with this on their own.
delk
Even close to 40 years later, this old gay remembers being a young HS gay. Easy to read the posse.
Back row, 2nd from left, green shirt: the leader, two guys on either side: dumb muscle, 4th from left, blue shirt: the brains of the unit, 5th, red and white shirt:has the ‘cool’ parents that let them all get away with shit, wall leaner and 2 crouchers: homework doers, test takers, let’s them copy for protection, first ones to take the blame.
BTW the school is ranked 98 out of 122.
DuggleBogey
Isn’t that area known as “Pennsyltucky?”
Shawn
Kids aren’t born with prejudice. Even if they came up with this on their own (which one or two of them probably did), they really didn’t. I bet everybody in that group isn’t even anti-gay but pro being part of the group which is a different kind of sad. Neither of those should suggest they should be excused from this behavior, somebody needs to sit them down and explain to them why this is wrong, and school is the exact place and they are at the age to do this (since it obviously hasn’t happened sooner). And if they truly get it, and apologize, they should be forgiven.
Growing up in Texas I had one (just one in 18 years of non Austin public schooling, sorry Texas haters) experience of somebody being blatantly anti-gay in school and it sticks with me today. A kid said “I’ll kick a f-g’s -ss.” It still bothers me today that I didn’t ask him why he thought that way or have the guts to tell him he was wrong (and risk the butt kicking he could have certainly administered).
gvg
They haven’t met many people yet. They haven’t experienced much, though they don’t really know that.
Sometimes timing matters too. I managed to grow mostly up without noticing that gay people existed. Then about jr high the aids crisis began to dominate the news. I did not have an opinion about gays before then. the news showed me stories about gay and lesbian people whose families wouldn’t speak to them while they were dying. Somehow parental meanness has always bothered me alot. It seemed so sad and wrong. So I was always from then on sympathetic. A few years later I met my first openly gay man. My hairdresser which is a stereotype. I assume many were pushed into the field by pressure but I don’t know. My second gay acquaintance was also my hairdresser and he cut and permed my hair well over 25 years. Over time my mother and sister also went to him and for awhile even my dad who couldn’t find a barber who cut the way he wanted. David is a nice normal man who has had the same partner for all those years, talked friends, business, hobbies and other things with me for a long time. We live in a different city now so I haven’t seen him too recently but he was beginning to have decisions to make about his older partners health. There is nothing to fear and I don’t get why it was even an issue ever. Well plenty of things in the past do seem nuts but that doesn’t really explain it.
debbie
@Violet:
Yep, the adolescent pre-frontal cortex. No ability to make decisions, no understanding of consequences, no impulse control. Only, with a real streak of meanness tossed in.
I was bullied a bit when I was in school, but it’s minuscule compared to what kids go through now. I think this country’s in for a very cruel future.
evodevo
I hate to tell them, but here in rural Ky there are quite a few flannel-wearing farmer types who happen to also be gay, tucked away in a lot of hollers. I personally know several.
elmo
Yeah, bullies don’t really need any help from adults to be cruel, vicious little shits. A lot of us here were bullied – I know I was, starting in kindergarten and ending in probably 11th grade. The funny thing is that I don’t now remember a lot of it. I’m 48 now, and most of elementary and middle school is a blank. But my older brothers remember. They weren’t bullied themselves – they were popular – but they have strong, angry memories of what happened to me, even though I don’t.
I do recall one incident, in elementary school. I was on a swing, on my belly as kids will do. Two boys came up behind me and grabbed my legs, and shoved me hard, face-first into the gravel. Took a good bit of the skin off my face, and I have a scar on my forehead to this day.
So, yeah. Name-calling, pushing, locker vandalism? SOP for a certain kind of young teenager.
RSA
@boatboy_srq:
Seeing this pic on Facebook, I had to ask why all these guys were dressed up as lesbians.
PhoenixRising
Zoe, my dear…you’re welcome.
30 years ago, when I was your age, death threats in Bible verses and watching for the jocks who threw me into a row of lockers was called Thursday. Now it’s a special holiday for and by assholes.
We’ve come a long way. And if those kids, or their wanna-bes, committed assault as the victim describes, they belong in the detention home. Until they learn the difference between having an opinion and committing a felony.
scav
@debbie: Worse than a universe of small nosy towns during the 50s? — I don’t know. Different, yes and in no ways ideal, let alone perfected, but I’m not sure uniquely worse.
Violet
@Comrade Dread:
I went on a date with a “reformed” gay man. As in, he told me he had been gay and found Jesus and now he’s straight. He lectured me on my spiritual life. All while dining at a restaurant in the middle of the area that was known for its gay nightlife. That’s where he took me.
It was absolutely bizarre. He was a nice guy, which is why I went out with him, but he was completely caught between his obviously sincere religious beliefs and the rest of his being. He later gave a testimonial at his church about how they’d saved him from being gay. I lost track of him so I don’t know what he’s doing now. I hope he’s happy. His entire demeanor was of someone who is not happy.
Don K
@Gin & Tonic:
I’d say pretty close to 100% probability. He realizes it now, but is joining in the fun so none of his buddies suspects he’s one of THEM. IME, closeted gays make the most vicious homophobes.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic: I haven’t been back to the school but once, a jazz band I like did a fund-raiser at the school, and my Dad invited us to go with him, so we did. Obviously no one there I ever knew, I graduated in 1968.
I’ve seen a guy I was in band with at a restaurant I was there visiting the parents. I have one friend I’m still close to in the town, but he graduated with my younger brother, not in my class. If it wasn’t for him I would never have a reason to stop there.
Everyone in my family has moved away (or died) since then. Aunts, uncles, cousins, all moved away. From Paris FR to Kona, HI to Brazil, and many points in between, but gone from the hometown.
I’m sure it is as backwards as Pennsyltucky. I never heard Alabama, I heard Kentucky between P’burgh and Philly. I feel bad for the kids in that school who these bigots are trying to bully. No one should have to put up with bullying while they’re trying to grow up the best they can.
Little fucking monsters is what those rotten bigots are.
Jado
My favorite part of this is the part where, after a Day of Silence, the Anti-Gay Day involved “…People started getting pushed and notes were left on people’s lockers.”
It’s never enough to just quietly register your bigotry. You ALWAYS have to include “a bit of the old ultra-violence” if you want people to notice. Otherwise, it’s just a discussion of opinions, and everyone will tell you your opinion is bigoted and shitty. Can’t have that
Keith G
@Shawn:
For an interesting discussion on the supportability of such a comment, see here The comments are well worth a read as well.
I taught in schools in and around Houston. In the districts where I taught, the type of behavior shown by the boys above would not be acceptable. at. all.
Don K
@debbie:
It probably depends on the school district. My husband’s nieces attended a high school in an affluent part of NJ, and say kids got extra coolness points for being gay. Working-class or rural high schools here in MI? Not so much.
I was fortunate in that i was straight-appearing enough that I was never harassed or bullied. I think the other kids just figured i was pretty much asexual and that explained my not dating. Although one girl wrote in my senior yearbook that she’d like to get to know the real Don K, to which my (internal) reaction was, “Yeah, right”.
coin operated
For those of you waiting for the olds to die off and the Republican party will reform itself? Your next batch of right-wing voters is being trained as we speak. I just left a part of Oregon affectionately known as ‘Springtucky’. For as liberal as the state is, you could have taken this entire town, dropped it in the poorest, deep-red section of Alabama, and nobody would have known the difference. I’m willing to bet this small town in PA is no different.
Edited to add…I doubt the kids would get away with this in the schools, but you damn sure better believe that the thought process is still in place.
celticdragonchick
@Aimai:
Rod Dreher is the living embodiment of this phenomenon.
Shawn
@Keith G: Thanks for the link. I think that is pretty limited evidence, but it is interesting. Maybe I am speaking anecdotally but a baby will smile at another human face that is smiling at him or her regardless of race, creed, language, economic status, etc (or maybe I just have a face chubby enough that babies think I am one of their own based on that alone). I think I still stand by my sentence.
celticdragonchick
@elmo:
Yep.
I graduated from high school in 1985, and elementary school in Southern California in the 1970’s was a fucking nightmare for anybody who stood out for any reason. Probably the same in many places, although my home town had a bit of a tough reutation for thugs and fighting(the school system was 99% white, so the “thug” reputation had nothing to do with bigotry towards African Americans.)
I was systematically bullied and assaulted in ways that would have resulted in numerous criminal charges today. Back then…the staff didn’t give two shits as long as you weren’t bleeding bad enough to call the ambulance. It was the Lord of the Flies in real life. Nothing ended until I fought back and hurt a kid (which nearly got myself kicked out of high school…but the harassment stopped. It should never have come to that.)
mai naem mobile
Okay this might sound stupid but my first thought was, sheet, what about kids who showed up in flannel shirts who had no idea about this anti gay thing. I remember going to high school and seeing a few kids who. always seemed to wear. flannel.
Comrade Dread
@Violet: It’s not just him. Depending on the church you visit, a lot of the message is ‘you’re a filthy degenerate sinner in the eyes of God who would be perfectly reasonable and just to torture you forever with fire for your grave crimes of telling a fib or speeding or having unapproved sexual relations, but if you only believe in Jesus and consequently stop being a human being, God will finally accept you.”
A lot of my fellow Christians as a result are deeply unhappy people. I was.
Shawn
@celticdragonchick: “my home town had a bit of a tough reutation for thugs and fighting” People have also been commenting that this area of that state is kind of known for being likely to produce this. So if not the home, certainly the village. Parenting and or enviroment matters. The kids are not without blame for taking it to this level but I just don’t know if I buy that a kid that came up with this didn’t have a seed planted and watered.
Bobby Thomson
High school ain’t young, Cole. A lot of atrocities and war crimes are committed by boys that age and younger. Basically, all teen age boys have to be presumed assholes until they show otherwise.
elmo
@celticdragonchick: CDC, did we go to school together? :)
I was one of the 10% of my high school grad class that went on to college. But we had the best damn auto body department in the State!
catpal
These anti-jerks are not from the “kids will be kids” bunch. They are religious-indoctrinated bigots. more info via dkos comments and local news
These are hateful parents teaching religious-based hate to their children. And too many these types of kids grow up to be hateful Republican politicians like those recently in Indiana.
LeeM
My first thought is who among them is overcompensating? My 12 year old son makes stupid & insensitive comments about “looking gay” or “acting gay”, and I have to just ask him why he even cares about other peoples sexuality? By high school you would think they had gotten the fear out of their system.
bobbo
Obviously these guys are exercising their religious freedom. Time for a GoFundMe page.
boatboy_srq
@evodevo: @RSA: You two need to read each other’s comments. And then go here.
Peale
@bobbo: Yeah. It looks like the school officials are handling this, so no need to pile on so that the boys get rich. I’m sure some enterprising fellows will offer them something for their time if they are “victimized” enough by our outrage.
celticdragonchick
@elmo:
Yucaipa High School was definitely about autobody class…
I ended up going to Moreno Valley and went into JrROTC.
Monala
@Germy Shoemangler: One of the things that made that so telling about Romney was that when a reporter contacted his friends who were involved in the incident, they (unlike Mitt) were deeply, deeply ashamed. One had even, some years ago, sought out the boy they had bullied to apologize to him.
John M. Burt
Were there any girls taking part in this activity? Because a girl wearing a flannel shirt is seriously not projecting the desired image, even more than a boy in a flannel shirt.
My sweetie reminds me that boys who hate teh ghey usually don’t socialize with girls, either.
I remember being suspected of being gay in high school — because I hung out with girls. Yeah, that totally makes sense….
zonker
All I can say is that down here in southern WV, anyone who would tuck their flannel shirts into their pants would automatically be suspect around here. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Morzer
@celticdragonchick:
I wonder when he’ll personally endorse the Junior Tight-Ass Bigot club as Big Rod’s Resistance Brigade?
JoyfulA
At first I thought the article meant Claysburg, which indeed is in Pennsyltucky.
But Claysville, per Wikipedia, is a tiny town on the Ohio border, well west of Pittsburgh. Pennsyltucky has enough problems; please don’t shift the boundaries to include every jerk in the state.