Almost exactly eleven yeas before Germany began World War II by invading Poland, her government, along with the governments of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and a number of other nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war. Italy and Japan joined Germany in declaring war on the Allied nations.
You cannot outlaw war. You cannot outlaw evil. And much as we’ve tried, laws cannot succeed in banning human cruelty. To be sure, they can increase its cost, hence the need for laws punishing such crimes as rape and other assaults, invasion of privacy and murder. Once those laws are in place, we need make sure they are enforced. More laws will not necessarily make future generations any more secure.
And it seems that whenever we hear a story that moves all of us, about the beating death of a young child or the suicide of a gay teen, various advocacy groups rush to advocate for more laws.
The problem, however, may not be the inadequacy of the laws on the books, but the cruelty of the perpetrators.
Some gay groups seem to think that additional anti-bullying policies might have prevented Tyler Clementi’s roommate from recording the young man’s private activities. Earlier today, I received an e-mail from the folks at California Faith for Equality (CFE) urging people, among other things, to “Organize . . . turn your anger and grief into actions to improve anti-bullying practices in local classrooms, campuses and transform our congregations into accessible networks of safe spaces.” While well-meaning, I’m not sure such practices will make much of a difference.
That said, creating an “accessible network of safe spaces” could well help young people looking for support.
It seems that the “gay rights’ paradigm” involves pushing for new laws or policies every time we hear of a terrible story like that which took place last month in New Jersey.
But, when there are laws on the books punishing such crimes, it’s time we consider other means to respond to such situations. Laws aren’t always the answer. To their credit, the folks at CFE do not limit themselves to proposing new policies.
Perhaps, we can learn from history. If instead of relying on a treaty banning war, the United States, United Kingdom and France and worked hard developing a deterrent, they would not have faced German belligerence in the 1930s. So, now the only question is determining an appropriate deterrent against bullying and invasions of privacy.
maybe this is too subtle a distinction, but can’t a law provide a deterrent effect?
Not all the time Chad. If laws did there would be no murders, thefts, robberies, or assaults for example.
What does provide deterrence though is peer pressure. Peers are legally restrained from intervening except to turn it over to the authorities who are then restrained by the bureaucratic system.
As a small example for you to consider when peers are not restrained from acting. The playground bully stops being the playground bully when he runs home with a bloody nose and 2 black eyes. This is not a major physical assault at 7 or 8 years old. But he is no longer the playground bully either.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” –C.S. Lewis
I agree that more laws aren’t the answer. It feels as though some victim-centric groups are almost giving the producers of South Park, a free episode.
I hate to sound like such a mean person, but I don’t think laws are the way to go. Neither are outreach programs designed to pair gay youth with gay adults.
The problem is that we are sexualizing children too young, which results in kids who don’t even understand sexuality making drastic decisions about their identity. I am horrified that 11-year-olds think they’re “gay”, when they’ve barely lived life. I also think something’s wrong when 15-year-olds have enough free unsupervised time to spend most of their time sexually experimenting, watching porn, engaging in discussions about sexual orientation with adults, and/or snooping into their peers’ sex lives.
To be honest, this notion of gay youth is a Ponzi scheme. I don’t think even 15% of the kids who are being harrassed as gay are gay, even if they say they’re gay themselves, which they often say out of pressure and the fear that the opposite sex will reject them.
If you just push more gay-identified resources on younger and younger children, you’re adding to the problem. You are basically drawing their focus away from their studies or sports or other things to questions of sexuality that can’t–shouldn’t–be answered until they are much older.
Call me biased because I came out at 40. But I think it was good for me to come out at 40. I don’t think “openness” or coming out of the closet at 16 is good for kids today, partly because the gay community is still a largely unsupportive and at times predatory venue in which to be a child. Suppressing myself allowed me to experience a full life of marriage and fatherhood, and kept me away from the dangerous distractions that left my gay peers infected with HIV, alienated, sex-addicted, or obsessed with working out to attract picky partners.
I feel passionately about this but I know I am hitting a brick wall — The solution to these beatings and suicides is not to talk more about gay issues, get kids to “accept” being gay, or try to provide gay role models. Maybe these kids aren’t gay. Maybe they don’t want to be gay — not because of homophobia, but because the gay lifestyle that they are likely to have isn’t as happy as something else they envision for themselves. The more we make their plight a gay issue, the more trapped we make the young person feel in a gay identity. And curing someone of not wanting to be gay, is as hard as curing them of being gay.
So it’s best for them to build up other parts of their identity and stop making everything about sexual orientation. The gay movement is largely to blame for these problems because they have placed too much emphasis on coming out of the closet and an “exclusive” gay identity that’s supposed to last a whole lifetime.
Let young people feel like they have choices, even if it may be an illusion — Send them the message that they can decide to be gay or straight later, after they’ve had years to think about it. In the meantime, give them lots of homework and teach them karate.
Coco: that’s the most insightful thing I’ve head in a long time.
We complain about the oppressive Gay Left, but we need to be careful how we use labels ourselves (hay–I’m bi, which in my experience may be more common then one side or the other, so I should know the danger of labels. 🙂 ).
Here’s a piece I just wrote about this, in response to an interview in Out magazine
Sorry, here it is:
http://colorfulconservative.blogspot.com/2010/10/solution-to-gay-suicide-stop-talking.html
Coco
I read what you wrote in OUT. This old man agrees with you. I knew kids that today would be called gay because of what we were doing in our teens. At that time the words “gay” and “queer” were only adjectives. Most of us got married and lived a long happy life. One of the kids who was pushed into getting married soon was devorced. He is gay. He and I are the only ones still living. He is 87.
You absolutely cannot stop evil when it presents itself and the very act of attempting to do so only ends up making this Country more militaristic. My 25 yr old son starting mentioning the militarizing of the police departments around 2000 and suffice it to say they have only become more so in the years since! Officer Friendly is no longer wearing flat shoes he is wearing military boots and that is a shame!
When evil rears its ugly head only the community at large, the outpouring of anger and sadness and the support of the community to the victims families can overcome the evil. To make more and more laws is only to make “someone” pay and usually that somehow never includes the original haters!
Bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional and involves an imbalance of power or strength. Usually, it is repeated over time. Traditionally, bullying has involved actions such as: hitting or punching (physical bullying), teasing or name-calling (verbal bullying), or intimidation through gestures or social exclusion. In recent years, technology has given children and youth a new means of bullying each other.
Cyberbullying, which is sometimes referred to as online social cruelty or electronic bullying, has been defined as “an aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual, using electronic forms of contact, repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself” (Smith et al., 2008, p. 376).
Whether or not Tyler Clementi’s roommate was just being a voyeur, peeping tom or was seeking a way to harass, I guess that will be discussed here (and elsewhere) and in the court when the roommate
Dharun Ravi and his cohort face prosecution.
It seems more likely to have been a prank or bit of voyeurism than an attempt to harm Clementi or cause his suicide. Ravi had known that Clementi was gay for at least a month, and there is no evidence of any harassment or abuse, much less hate. In fact the day before his death Celementi described Ravi as “a pretty decent roommate.” http://www.livescience.com/culture/rutger-university-tyler-clementi-suicide-hate-crime-101005.html
Sidenote: Having spent the last two weeks looking for a new athletic club/gym, I noticed the signage in most gyms “no cellphones with cameras”. Now there is technology to live stream video from cell phones.
So as far as developing deterrants to this type of behavior/actions, maybe situations that create environments where privacy can be breached, organizations may have to create new guidelines, expectations and rules. Folk may need some edumacation around the ethical use of these new technologies/applications (remote use of webcams) and video/photo sharing.
In some cases the law does hold people responsible for actions that indirectly result in accidents or deaths. For example, many states can hold bars and restaurants responsible for serving drunk drivers, where there is a reasonable expectation that an action will result in harm. But broadcasting a dorm roommate’s sexual escapades will likely result in only minor criminal charges. http://www.livescience.com/culture/rutger-university-tyler-clementi-suicide-hate-crime-101005.html
Didn’t Clementi also tweet that he was pretty confident that the webcam hadn’t caught him doing anything beyond but kissing the guy? Did we find out if it did or it didn’t?
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but I get the feeling that this incident may have been used to build a false narrative, by people with agendas.
College kid, a legal adult, commits suicide. Very sad. College roommate happened to have recently violated his privacy, webcamming him kissing a guy. World puts 2 and 2 together and embarks on an orgy of hand-wringing concern for the historic oppression of gays. Nice thoughts, nice to see the concern, kudos to the world… but… did we get the facts right first?
Sorry, typo, “anything beyond kissing the guy”. (The extraneous ‘but’ didn’t mean anything.)
ILC, consider that one of the fatal flaws of the information age. The most important criteria is getting the news first… breaking the story. This creates a situation where factual accuracy is often way back on the list of priorities, simple due to the fact that gathering information takes time, and time is the enemy of our high-speed info-world. I know that the GP’ers, along with myself, try as best as we can to try and get accurate info, but we’ve all fallen into the “comment now / fact-confirm later” trap. It’s inevitable.
ILC, since when do facts matter to the media? 🙂 I happen to agree with you to some degree. But I think this incident is being used as a visible proxy for all the suicides lately that have been the result of bullying, even though this particular incident might not have been bullying in the usual sense.
Coco, you make a good point about the number of kids being bullied for being gay who aren’t gay. I would add that this happens because at that age “gay” is often a synonym for “different from the crowd”. The phrase “That’s so gay” is a good example of this – it has removed the sexual connotation and replaced it with a “you don’t conform” connotation. Where I disagree with you is sending them the message that they can choose to be gay or straight later. Although your experience sounds like it was different, and perhaps you identify as bi, many (if not most) of us have known from sometime during puberty that there was something “different” about us. And it’s not a choice that we made. I cannot choose to be sexually attracted to a woman, so it would be dishonest of me to have married and fathered children with one. Clearly that is not the case for you, and I appreciate that difference. But I think we do a disservice to kids who are gay if we insist they stay “in the closet” until they are mature enough to make some kind of false decision. Maybe that’s the wrong phrase. What I’m getting at is that yes, those kids can eventually choose a “lifestyle” that fits what they think they want out of life, but it seems to me that that assumes the worst about being an out adult. My own life looks more like every straight couple I know than any urban-centered gay experience. Always has, always will.
We should be helping kids mature, and helping them avoid destructive sexual activity at any age, regardless of orientation. I was lucky enough to come from a supportive home environment where responsible choices – both sexual and non-sexual – were discussed openly and honestly, and that put me on the right path to avoid the sorts of consequences you mention. There is a line between sexualization of youth and responsible parenting/mentoring. It is sometimes a fine line, but it’s possible to stay on the right side of it.
Just my thoughts on it anyway,
this is a good It Gets Better. . .gay cop, gay marine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC-ZnayVEX0
While I agree that education and changing peer-responses to bullying and “otherness” can mitigate schoolyard bullying, kind and compassionate words and vigorous finger-wagging will not put a stop to it. Once past that point, the deterent is making bullying “too expense” to consider as a option; detentions, expulsions and worse.
While raised by my recentky-deceased Quaker mother to ignore or divert bullies when I was in school; there’s still the value of having the option of instant, urgent and extremely-violent retaliation. My primary HS bully was a real pesky and physical assaults were common despite complaints to “higher authority”…including his mother. Finally I’d had it with turning the other cheek on day in the Boys’ locker room bathroom after some offense and grabbed him by the throat with my thumb and forefinger crushing his wind-pipe and one-armed picked him right off the ground against the wall…and said one word. “…Enough!” (This was several years before Darth Vader questions the Rebel smuggler-ships captain similarly, …That scene still brings back fond memories.)
He got the message and his friends saw him dangling there in his underwear 18-inches off the ground and backed-off. It didn’t stop the comments and petty insults and indignities…but it did stop the overt physical assaults in the hallways and on the way home. (I HATED high school.)
It may annoy the Liberals, but I believe that only an incompetent LEAVES violence as his last-resort.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but I get the feeling that this incident may have been used to build a false narrative, by people with agendas.
No… you think?
I’m not sure if you can deter any crime without violating someone’s rights. If every person is innocent until proven guilty, wouldn’t it be unfair to impose the penalty before the crime was ever committed?
At any point in time, a man could sharpen all of his number two pencils, and go on a killing spree. Why doesn’t he? Because doing so would violate his own set of personal values.
The people who value the lives of others, simple because they are alive, are acting in their own self-interest, by respecting the rights of others. They value the rights of other people.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.
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Every motivation for acting in one’s own self-interest, including self-preservation, are subjective. The concepts that form our moral code, the thing that forces us to value the things in life that are temporary, those things are our “perspective”, our “feelings”, our “beliefs”, and our “desires”.
If everything in life was guaranteed, would we value anything? If money grew on trees, would we spend it less wisely?
ALL FREE PEOPLE, both good and evil, act in their own self interest. It’s not just the evil people who self-serve, as Progressives like to say, but charities as well, act in their own selfish way. They seek out situations where people are treated poorly, in direct violation of the personal values of the charity’s members, and they take action. (Those selfish bastards!)
Socialists like to mandate a list of values to a community, and call them objective. That list is anything but objective. That list reflects only the subjective views of the ruling class. (There is no more carbon in the world than there was 3 million years ago. The earth is a relatively closed system!)
By definition, socialism acts to impede our self-determination. It obstructs our inalienable right to act on our own set of values, by deciding for us which causes are worthy or our personal excesses.
The fact is that every person who pulls his hand out of a fire, or tells his child not to play in the street, that person is acting out of his own self-interest.
I totally reject the socialist definition of ‘selfish’.
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gator, the progressive leftist definition of “selfish” is when you would rather make choices for your own life than let the progressive left make choices for you.
then there is the O’Reilly chatter with Margaret Hoover
http://www.goproud.org/margaret-hoover-on-oreilly-factor-discusses-silent-epidemic/
That sounds familiar! This popped into my head a couple of months ago:
A Socialist is someone who feels unqualified to make decisions for himself, but feels entitled to make those same decisions for everyone else.
It’s the view from the other side of the fence.
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“then there is the O’Reilly chatter with Margaret Hoover”
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People are defined by their actions, not their intentions. (and not by their rhetoric either)
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Neptune, excellent points!
Coco, I think under a more ideal setting, I would agree with your point of view. Not that I think children, gay or straight, should be sexualized, but we are bombarded with images of straight behavior all the time. We have dances in high school where it is assumed for all children, that they will be dancing with someone of the opposite sex. (Maybe your point is that we shouldn’t do this either.) Anyway, that’s why I take Neptune’s point of view. Straight teens, and even preteens, start to act on their sexuality, not necessarily by having sex, but having dates, talking to their friends about who they are attracted to, etc. But young gay persons may have to keep these things to themselves. And that doesn’t always lead to good things.
Ted B., good story! I would have liked to have been there to see that happen. But I’m not sure what you mean about using violence (or, in your case, appropriate self-defense) as a last resort about being incompetent. It sounds as if your tried other methods first, which seems wise, before you embarrassed the hell of that a$$h0le.
As for deterring bullying, I don’t see why the bully in Ted B.’s story, or others, are allowed to return to school. Why is this student’s education any more important to the other kids in the school? And if keeping off school grounds still did not solve the problem, well, there should be a jail cell with his name on it.
Sure, teach skills to children to deal with bullies. But teach skills to school administrators to get this trash out of our schools.
I read about this story a few days ago. It is a very sad story and it makes me feel upset.
Here are my ideas of practical deterrents to bullying and invasions of privacy for schools and colleges:
~U.S. Congress can pass sensible initiatives that address cyberbullying. As Fox News host Gretchen stated in this O’Reilly news report, Congress and law enforcement needs to advance when it comes to new technologies.
~Parents across the country can teach there children at a young age. Children and teenagers can try homeschooling and private colleges where there is a more safe environment to learn.
~As for public schools across the country, including our nation’s prisons, they need to return safe but harsh corporal punishment (wiki definition) for bullies and criminals. School faculty administrators need to collaborate and address bullying of any kind. Schools and colleges need to have emergency pamphlets that students receive or easily access early in the semester for health and safety advice.
~Public institutions such as gym facilities need to post clear signs on their walls that items like cellphones with video capabilities need to be fully closed or put away. Penalties can be used on any public violations.
~American parents need to amp-up their disciplinary actions and teach children to take personal responsibility and practice self-integrity.
~Lastly, revitalize urban communities and create family support networks where children can grow up safely and securely.
Despite all the caca we keep hearing, from the arbiters of political correctness, about “self-esteem,” under what passes for their leadership we have seen kids’ sense of self-esteem become so precarious that they seem to feel that every nanosecond of their lives have to be witnessed — via the latest technology — by everybody in the world.
It somehow doesn’t seem “real” to them if other people can’t see it, or at least know about it. They’re not even content to record their own private moments; they turn their little spy-cams and hidden microphones on each other.
Some genuine sense of themselves, as individuals whose lives are valuable simply because they’re living them, might go a long way toward getting them over the notion that every day must be an episode of reality TV.