Thanks to the television show Glee, the slushie has been elevated from an overly sugary refreshment to an act of public humiliation. Not since a cream pie hit the face of Anita Bryant, has a caloric treat wielded such stature.
Previously, the slushie had been confined to fictional encounters. It has now entered our reality. On Mother’s Day 2014, a young woman named Jessica Prince became so irate that she felt compelled to throw a red slushie at an anti-gay protestor. You might call it, The Slushie Heard Around the World. The slushie actually only grazed the woman, but splashed her enough that those who repeated the tale use the term “doused”.
The protestor, Christine Weick, instantly brandished pepper spray. Jessica Prince flipped her off from a safe distance. The stand off dissipated, but news of it had only just begun.
Conservatives like blogger Dan Calabrese decided that the slushie toss was not the reaction of a lone pissed off young woman, but an orchestrated effort by all of “the secular left”. The “secular left”. he says. “clearly believes it has the upper hand in the cultural debate, and it has absolutely no intention of tolerating dissent. Not only that, but it views those who challenge its orthodoxy as basically sub-human, to the point where an action like this one is justified in their minds.”
Mass left-wing conspiracy theories not withstanding, as a gay dad, I would tell Ms. Prince the same thing I have to remind my son Jesse when he gets angry at school, and acts out. It usually goes something like this:
“OK Pal, so who was first in the wrong?” “They were.” “What did you do about it?” “I threw something at them.” “Was that a good idea? Whose action was worse, and who got in trouble?” “No, my action was worse, and I got in trouble.” “Not a great choice then, was it, huh?” “No.”
So—quick note to Ms. Prince. Let’s re-think the slushie and remember that it is the tool of the BULLIES on Glee, not the good guys.
In such incidents at school, Jesse is charged with resolving the situation. That often includes composing a letter to the person he harmed, and taking responsibility for his actions. It can, ideally, be a tool to make amends. Ms. Prince seems a capable young woman and I do not mean to detract from her own restitution, but since people like Mr. Calabrese have swept all of us who witnessed the event into his broad brush of blame, I figured I would chime in:
Dear Ms. Weick,
I am sorry you experienced a sense of humiliation standing on that Michigan street corner this past Mother’s Day. Having something wet, cold and sticky with shards of sharp ice tossed your way could not have been pleasant. I am truly regretful for that part of your experience.
The anger behind the toss, however, was deserved. Let’s face it, you are in the business to inflame, if not enrage. Beyond the issue of marriage equality, you have sought to create a series of controversies through your exercise of free speech.
Your former past as an ex-witch still appears to help mold your current persona as an author interpreting and messaging the biblical book of Revelations. Like many others, you have taken it upon yourself to declare various signs of the “end times” to tittilate anyone who will listen to you. Those that you have cast as perpetrators in the “end of days” scenario include the Occupy Wallstreeters to Obamacare. Worse, you bought a billboard to declare through direct implication that the Anti-Christ is none other than Pope Francis .
Publicly saying cruel things to people you don’t know is not a new behavior for you.
Please be aware, bullies with an agenda are still bullies.
Which leads me to your Mother’s Day sign. You stated “THANK YOUR MOM TODAY FOR NOT BEING GAY”. Mr. Calabrese was able to explain the supposed logic it tried to convey. He stated, “All gay sex would mean the end of the human race. Seems pertinent to the day.”
I would be happy to relieve both your and Mr. Calabrese’s concerns in this matter. While I am loathed to speak on behalf of all LGBT people, I am going to go out on a limb and do so in this case: We don’t want you, or Mr. Calabrese to have gay sex.
We do not want any heterosexual who wants to procreate to have gay sex. We do not want people in opposite sex marriages to leave those arrangements and get same sex partners. Keep your private parts doing what they are currently doing. We do not want all sex that is had …to be gay. It can be mostly heterosexual sex. That is A-OK by us.
We want dignity and respect for our marriages, our loves and our own lives –period. (Guess what, many of us were not going to have heterosex anyway.)
So, please, feel better in knowing that by allowing us to live our lives, a threat to the state of heterosexual domination simply will not happen. I think you can take further solace in the fact that if Pope Francis is, to your theory, the Anti-Christ, he will certainly take over the world faster than we gay people could hypnotize borderline heterosexuals over to our camp . So, even if that was our agenda, which it is not, your end-times theory would be your trump card. You would still win. So…please, leave us alone.
Leaving us alone is the point. As I said, I am sorry that you had to suffer the indignity of a slushie, but you set out to create harm, and that causes reactions. You were being a bully.
The person who best spoke to the harm you were causing was the lady in the car who called out “I am gay, and I have children.” She, and families like hers, like mine, were the ones at whom you threw your verbal slushie . Your sign told our children their parents were inferior and they should be ashamed to have us.
Whether you believe that we are sub par as parents or not, the fact you put that statement in the face of our children is unbelievably cruel, or as the gay mother told you, “Sick.”
There is upside in this for you as an attention hound. If it weren’t for Ms. Prince, you would not be getting notoriety. You prayed for an event like this. That slushie was your friend. As they say however, be careful what you pray for, you may get it.
The notoriety you have gained will increase the visibility on the public questions you have raised. Who exactly is, or will be, the “Anit-Christ”? Is it truly the pope as you have speculated? Or is it a person or people even more destructive to children of faith? That person, I think, would be the person who drives the children of earth away from Christ in droves. That person would make just the mention of Jesus’s name a source of revulsion rather than attraction.
I believe we all met that person on the street corner in Michigan.
Tonight, when you go home, go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. The face of the accomplished anti-Christ will be staring back at you, unmasked. That person is you.
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