Jamie Hubley died at the hand of the spawn of the ignorant

I have been reading the news stories about Jamie Hubley who committed suicide after being bullied for being gay, and have found myself feeling extraordinarily sad and disappointed. The more I read, the more I felt for this young man who did nothing but live his life the best way he knew how. I read about the batteries shoved down his throat on a school bus where no one did anything to prevent it. I read about his family making complaints to the school and no one did anything about it. I read about his final blog saying goodbye because he could not take it anymore; I wept.

All day I felt depressed and I could not figure out why. I am a gay man who never had to deal with being bullied. I went to secondary school and was part of a crowd that was never bothered; we were just people. We were not the “in” crowd; we were not the nerds or jocks. We were just ordinary students living our lives. No one knew I was gay at the time, even though I’m sure that some of them suspected. But I remember that one day I was in the school’s parking lot and I saw an obviously gay young man being harassed by some bullies and I chose to do nothing. I sat there smoking my cigarette, talking with my friends and watched the whole episode. I did not cheer or call out names, but I did nothing. To this day I think about that moment and ask myself why I did not intervene. The answer, I am ashamed to say is, I thought “better him than me.”

I did make overtures to make him my friend a few days later, but he rejected my offer of friendship; I could not blame him.

As I continued reading the news on the news websites, I found that my sadness was turning to anger. I was reading CBC.ca and going over the messages left by other readers, anonymous readers, and my blood began to boil.

Almost every message left was very positive and understanding: this should have never happened, we have to do more to stop this, how could this happen in this day and age, and so on. This was not what made me angry, in fact it encouraged me. What made me furious was the option that CBC.ca uses with each message: they have an option to “agree” or “disagree” with the comment. For each positive comment, there were 36, 45, 89 people who agreed with the comment. But there were also 4, 6, 8, 10 people, who clicked on “disagree” with the comment.

No matter how small the number, some people chose to disagree with a comment about how sad this situation is. Some people chose to say ( all the while cloaked in anonymity) that it is ok to bully someone who is gay, that it is ok for a 15 year old boy to take his life because of this. Man, I am so incredibly pissed off that this type of incredibly toxic thinking exists here in Canada. I am so furious that I would like to confront each and every one of them, in person, with their children tied up in front of them. I would make them watch as I bullied them for being fat, blond, brown eyed, short , tall, black, white, aboriginal, catholic, jewish, atheist (though atheists cause the fewest problems), handicapped, and any other minority you could think of.

The people, who disagreed with supporting this family, are probably the parents of the kids who bullied Jamie to death. They are the ones who are really responsible. I would love to live a dark, Twilight Zonesque, fantasy and have all of these parents wake up tied to an old school, genuine prison electric chair. They would be sitting in front of big, big screen TV that was playing, in real time, the bullying activities of their progeny. Every time that their precious snowflakes, that they call children, bullied someone, a stony faced prison guard would throw the switch and give them a blast of karmic electrocution.  I would see them writhing and screaming in pain as they tried to mentally stop their offspring from abusing some hapless innocent child. Maybe they would finally understand how their attitudes and actions affect the lives of others.

Alas, this I cannot do. But what I can do, as every single human being should do, is stand up against bullies every single time I am confronted with one. And I do.

I am about to write something that many people would disagree with.  I am going to tell you what I really think. I am sick to death of bullies thinking they can abuse weaker people because they know they will not stand up for themselves. I say, stand up. I say bash back. I say fight with any means you have at your disposal. I say organise and DO NOT TAKE IT ANY MORE.

I say enough with the parents who just don't care. I say enough with school boards who refuse to intervene. I say enough with governments who don't stand up and fight against this. I say enough to everyone who just stands by and lets this happen.

I. SAY. ENOUGH.