Brody's Scribbles... The Cycle Of Hate

Joseph Couture is a Canadian based Author and Freelance Journalist. Joseph's blogsite can be found here: [ Link ]

By Joseph Couture (London, Ontario) OCT 1 | There is nothing new about closeted homosexuals persecuting other homosexuals.  There is a long and well established pattern of it from religious leaders, politicians and even celebrities.  Once again, we are seeing the sad consequences of that fact being played out before our eyes with the suicides of our children and the devastation of our community at the hands of our own people.

The school yard bullying of gay children, the harassment of individuals and the targeting of the vulnerable as a blood sport has led to the suicides of several young men in recent days.  This is the direct result of the poisonous environment being created by hateful individuals who are often part of the very community they ridicule.

It is easy to condemn these people as hateful, hypocritical, self righteous and loathsome cowards.  However, it is not that simple.  There is another side to this story and a reason they do the things they do.

Those individuals who preach hatred and intolerance toward gays and yet are themselves gay have a problem.  Their problem lies in the fact that they are the very thing they hate most.  They are the object of their own derision.

This happens for a reason.  When these people were growing up, perhaps sensing an inkling of who they really were, they heard the same messages of hate that they would later repeat themselves.  They were told they were worthless sinners worthy of death and imprisonment in the eternal hell fires of God’s wrath.

They grew up conflicted and in pain suffering as much from the intolerance of society as the rest of us.  The difference is many gays and lesbians had the courage and wherewithal to recognize both the reality of their own situation and the truth that being gay is neither a crime nor a sin.  

Some were not so strong.  They were the ones who clung to their denial, anger and hate as means of distracting others (and themselves) from the truth of their situation.  They believe as long as they are pointing fingers people are looking elsewhere. But the truth is that when they look in the mirror every morning, they hate what they see.  How sad and how painful it must be to hate yourself that much and to be utterly unable to overcome your own inner demons.

They learned this hate from the generation before them, who learned it from the generation before that, and so on.  They internalized this hatred for gays and lesbians from men and women who hated gays for same reason they do, out of fear and weakness born of their own insecurities.  It was a legacy of self-hatred passed down from one generation to the next.

The current crop of bigots is doing their duty by passing on their cowardice to their own young, and thus the pathology is passed down in a never ending, self-perpetuating cycle of self-loathing and cruelty.  Someone at some point has to break the chain.

While I say to these men and women who suffer the torment of denial and live in a prison policed by their own guilty consciences, I feel compassion for you.  I am sorry you have neither the strength nor the courage to free yourselves. 

However, that said, we cannot allow you to pass on your poison to our friends and loved ones while you figure things out.  We will do everything we can to stop you from infecting others with the disease of self-hatred.  I feel for you, but I will oppose your attempts to continue the cycle of dysfunction.

I hope that one day we will be united by our love of our fellow man.  In the meantime, while we are torn apart by our fear of each other, we must work to save those we can from suffering the same fate as our parents and our parents parents. If some of our brothers and sisters are not prepared to join us at this time, I am sorry for that.  But I caution you, do not stand in our way because we have a job to do and we will not let you stop us.