A repository for Marcospinelli's comments and essays published at other websites.

Ellen's Emotional Plea: Stop Teenage Bullying (VIDEO)

Friday, October 1, 2010


All over the media, I'm hearing this story reduced to "concern" by faculty and administrators at colleges and universities around the nation, about "over-sharing online".  That wasn't the cause.  That was the means by which Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei assaulted Tyler Clementi (Ravi's roomate) for his sexual orientation.  

To be so comfortable in their bias that they didn't think twice about, 1) violating Clementi's privacy by taping him in the first place, and then 2) broadcasting it on the internet without bothering to hide their own identities, Ravi and Wei had to have felt strongly reinforced in their bias (not just by their families or religion, but by the culture) and that there would be no blowback.  They had to believe that everyone thought the same thing as they did about homosexual behavior and wouldn't fault them for invading Clementi's privacy and broadcasting it online.  When the US government itself practices discrimination through policies and laws like DADT and DOMA, what other message would Ravi and Wei have gotten, but that gays are lesser beings, not even human.  I say that because what Ravi and Wei did was what we do with our pets and other animals and then upload to YouTube.  

I used to believe that political leaders didn't realize how laws like DADT and DOMA set gays up for abuse and bullying and violent acts against them, but I don't any longer.  

I think now of political leaders as partners to the abusers and bullies.  They exploit intolerance and ig.nor.ance of their constituents, for their own parties' benefit, as well as for their own personal political power.  Both parties keep the denial of gays' rights a wedge issue, to activate their bases each election season.   
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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