I've just come from the Civilized Debate board, where a particularly nasty episode has been concluded with a 13 year old student deciding to leave the board, since a couple of people "didn't want him there"!
How did this come about on a board that is supposed to be "civilized"?
Well, you might ask!
Leo came to the board a few days ago and proclaimed his interest in posting on the "Shooting the Breeze" forum. (He said he didn't want to post on the Politics forum, because he didn't know enough about it!)
So Leo made the mistake of telling us about a friend of his who was 15 years old and gay--"but was a really nice bloke, who had never made a move on him!" He also said he had already told his friend that he liked girls and his friend was "cool" with that!
He then wanted to know why other guys at his school made fun of him and told him he "must be gay" if he hung out with a gay. He wondered if we had an explanation.
So, in a few short words, I told him that at his age, other students didn't have much tolerance of "different" people and, as a result, enjoyed picking on them.
I advised Leo to just ignore them. I also told him I couldn't see any harm in being friends with a gay person, as long as the gay wasn't "hitting" on him in any way.
So, of course, two of the other members proceeded to jump on poor Leo, making all kinds of horrible predictions about how sooner or later the gay would hit on him and he wouldn't be able to stop it, etc. They advised him to dump the gay friend and get as far away as possible.
In other words, they demonstrated their complete paranoia about gays to the world!
The result is, Leo has decided to drop off the board. He's emailed me a note, letting me know that he would like to stay in touch with me, because I seem to be, as his Cousin put it, "-a real gentleman".
I think Leo is a pretty good kid and, if possible, I'll continue to write to him just to see how he's making out.
It's too bad there are so many paranoids out there when it comes to the subject of gays! Leo was simply a young teenager looking for answers to some of the questions he didn't have answers for-
---and who else would you ask for those answers except adults?
No comments:
Post a Comment