There’s going to be a lot of talk in the coming days about the new conservative victimhood meme — oh you haven’t heard it? Conservatives are the new bullying victims! You see, conservatives are now having to fight for their rights to employment and housing, and they face a hard road coming out as conservatives: some kids are bullied so much for being conservative that they end up taking their own lives; others are rejected by their families and kicked out to live on the streets. Moreover, hate crimes against conservatives are now the most common kind of hate crime, which is bit confusing for them, as they oppose hate crimes legislation.
Of course, all of the above is laughable. No gay person, activist or not, has ever tried to take any fundamental right away from any conservative Christian person. There is a debate to be had, surely, over whether fundamentalists actually understand where their rights end and where the rest of the nation’s citizens’ begin, but I don’t want to have it right now.
Instead, I want to spotlight the story of Iowa teen Ben Alley, who just graduated high school with a 3.25 GPA and is on his way to the University of Iowa. You see, Ben had the misfortune of being born to a Southern Baptist and his wife, who kicked him out onto the street when they found out he was gay:
Ben Alley misses his parents. He’s 18 and just graduated from East Marshall High School in Le Grand, with scholarships to almost cover his costs at the University of Iowa. It’s a time for open houses and pride. But he won’t be getting that from his once-close family — the Southern Baptist minister father and the mother who home-schooled him early on.
They’re not dead; he’s dead to them. In sophomore year, Ben informed his parents that he is gay. They informed him he wouldn’t be coming home after school the next day — or ever again.
[…]
Ben’s is actually two stories in one. The first is about a kid rejected, homeless and compelled to live independently at 16, requiring him to take a late shift job at Walmart to help cover costs. That meant most nights he didn’t start homework until 10:30. It’s about a young man raised in a home where being gay was considered “right up there with being a child molester.” At age 10 he was told by his mom that he didn’t deserve to live anymore, after she caught him experimenting with a boy the same age. Later, when he fought depression, counselors told Ben, “You’ve been taught to hate everything you are.”
Yeah. But please, let’s have this conversation about fundamentalist Christians as bullying victims. It should be entertaining.
