The Right Is Killing Us

Earlier in the week, a 21 year-old Tampa man went on trial for murdering his 3-year old son. Apparently the father, Ronnie Paris Jr., pummeled his boy to death because he thought the boy might be gay.

According to charges, Paris decided that the way to cope with this fear was to box with the child, slapping him until the boy either cried or wet himself. Once Paris threw his son against the wall.

Eventually, the boy lapsed into a coma and was rushed to a hospital. Six days later he was removed from life support and died.

Here you have a father so afraid that his son might be gay that he’s willing to beat the crap out of him, as though that somehow might make the child straight. There’s no point arguing with the strategy, or even the thinking (or the lack thereof). Outside of the fact that an innocent child has died for no reason, what’s most frightening is the idea that a father would feel it necessary to take such extraordinary steps to prevent his son from being gay.

And where do you think that he might pick up that message?

The right wing has long vilified gays. Gays are perverts, gays are sick, gays are the scourge of society. For the most part, being gay in American means that you spend a great deal of time listening to half the country assert how repellent you are.

Straight people -- even gay-tolerant ones -- often ask, why is there so much self-hatred in the gay community, as though being the constant brunt of bigotry and hatred doesn’t take a constant and unmitigating toll. Even some of the most mature and well-adjusted gays have moments of self-doubt when faced with pictures of thousands of protestors claiming that God Hates Fags.

But such misinformation takes another toll. The right wing’s relentless propaganda machine has a pernicious effect throughout society. Not only does it remind gays how much they’re hated by a segment of the population, it helps convince parents who don’t know much about homosexuality that it’s evil, a perversion, something that no family could possible want in its midst. When people are exposed only to the hateful bigotry of the right, what’s the result? When taken to the extreme, infanticide -- as the Tampa case reveals.

Is this really what the right wing wants? A war against homosexuality in which innocent children are slaughtered in the name of righteousness?

Sometimes, it seems that, yes indeed, this is exactly what the right wing hopes for. Because where else can such anger, hatred, and intolerance lead?