Brody's Scribbles... Fear And Loathing In The Loveless

By Desmond Rutherford (Adelaide, Australia) Sept 15 | Like the bullies in my school from age 7 to 12, teachers made no attempt to stop my daily physical beatings and ridicule by both the other students and most of the teaching staff. It continued into my first two years of high school.

It only stopped when I had to repeat my 2nd year of high school because I had started to not care about studying. I was suddenly a year older than my class mates and they left me alone because I was bigger than they were. I even made three good friends.

Why was I the subject of such treatment for all those years? It was because of my skin colour, pale white. I couldn't get a tan, and I couldn't play sport because of a heart defect. It was because I had red hair.  But mostly it was because I was a happy boy who expected to make friends. I was as much an outcast as any ethnic person. Therefore I was unworthy of the teachers and an object of ridicule for my fellow students. Oh and I knew I was gay because they all told me I was, teachers included.

That was over 50 years ago. Sadly little seems to have changed except some teachers are a little more aware, and in some places the bullying problem is being addressed to a degree.

I was lucky, I survived, but daily in our societies, I see the bullies in the work-place, in managerial positions, in politics, and of course in the religious organisations that practise anything but the love they preach. That so-called, faith based organisations have the audacity to claim that they are trying to address the bullying problem and then turn their backs on accepting the sexuality of kids is nothing short of hypocrisy, and offering their version of love for the so-called sinner, denies the human condition of its rights, and compounds their hypocrisy with a felony, a crime against individual freedom which invites thoughts of suicide.

Believe or perish in hell, is bullying in the name of God, regardless of your sexuality, or any heavenly promises in another life.

To lose a boy like Billy Lucas is a tragedy and his death is a symbol of the loss that occurs deep inside everyone who is, or has ever been subject to bullying, whether it is in school, the work-place, or on the altar of someone's belief. Until the religions and their followers stop belittling, bullying or stoning people for not conforming, kids and adults will be sacrificed in the name of a cause that has no morality, no hope, or honour, and above all, no compassion. But then genuine compassion is a weakness; just ask any bigot, any scoundrel, any hater of life, they will tell you, or they will lie to cover up their self-loathing and proclaim their belief as all important.

Fear uses bullying as an offensive protection against another person who exhibits the enigma of, life affirming love.

Bullying doesn't just overcome the need to love, or even to understand it, fear in the bully supplants the possibility of love with hate, irrational blind hatred, thrashing, belittling, bullying, in defence of its own inferiority complex.

The bullying persona empowers the individual with a sense of control over others. The bullying agenda will create rules and laws where none are needed just to maintain its power, and it will seek to prohibit others from discovering what it fears most, what it can never understand while hatred controls it, that -Love affirms life.

This Love in this life is something that our so-called family value, faith based organisations have yet to comprehend, though I am sure they will defend their version of love, their belief, with all the hypocrisy a bully can muster. They seem to have confused loving with loathing. They are in fact loveless.

In the meantime, we can all work to prevent another tragedy by sharing the concept that to love and let live is nothing to fear, and everything to be encouraged.