Chad Felix Greene:
Daniel Ashley Pierce became a viral gay hero this week when a video he secretly recorded was picked up by the gay magazine The Advocate and titled “WATCH: ‘Christian’ Family’s Terrifying Response to Son Coming Out”. The article opens with this ominous description: “A 19-year-old gay man is safe and staying with a family friend in Atlanta, Georgia, after suffering physical and verbal abuse at the hands of his stepmother, father, and grandparents when he told them he was gay.” The article goes on to say the video provides a “…chilling first-hand look at the violence and rejection that can result when parents don’t accept their child’s sexual orientation.”
This narrative, naturally, plays directly into the popular myth of an oppressive and exclusive Christian intolerance for gay family members. As the fable goes, the heartless and cruel family gang up to give the gay child one last chance to repent before they disown him forever. As The Advocate implies, this is common and the likely reason for so many gay homeless youth in the country. This story is amplified due to the nature of the encounter which Pierce states was an intervention to attempt to convince him to undergo ex-gay therapy. As one commenter on the article put it “This sounds like a typical coming out in a Christian fundamentalist family. And it is NOT shocking they all have Southern accents!” liked 136 times.
The story was further picked up by BBC News and Pierce was interviewed by CNN. The CNN transcript begins with: Grandmother: “You have made a choice.” and the father saying “You’re a disgrace.” Pierce objects demanding he has been gay “…from the moment I come out of my mother’s uterus. I have been that way.” The CNN Dr. Drew interview quotes a man named Schacher involved in the discussion describing the video as such: “Oh, Dr. Drew, it made me skin crawl. It made me nauseous. So, yes, at the end of the video it started to get heated and the teenager — he remained poised and calm and continued to say it`s not a choice. This is who I am. And then one person started to beat him and then another person you hear kind of cheering on the beating and he`s saying, stop it, stop it,…”
The video is available at The Advocate and it is largely audio. Pierce seems to have turned it on at the beginning of the conversation. His family is surrounding him and his grandmother begins, not by condemning but by saying “First I want to say that I love you.” She confirms she has known he was gay since he was a small boy, but nevertheless her faith states he has a choice in how he lives his life. He responds by repeatedly and smugly dismissing her statements arguing he has taken a biology class and it has been confirmed by “scientific studies” that personality is developed within the first 6 weeks and there is nothing one can do to change that. The grandmother contends that G-d’s word says otherwise to which he arrogantly replies: “Well scientific studies trump G-d’s word.”
The grandmother then firmly states that if he chooses to continue on as he has he is no longer welcome to live in her house. He states he will move out in a few days by midnight and asks his mother in an obviously sarcastic way if he can live in her basement. She apparently indicates no as he responds “well that isn’t very motherly.” The conversation escalates quickly when his stepmother challenges him on previous conversations he had on the topic with her to which he immediately begins shouting, cursing and physically moves towards her. He then engages in aggressive name-calling and what is viewed in shaky physical confrontation in which several other family members attempt to break up the mutual attack.
There are several important components to point out, discussed in this post asking questions about the encounter as well as confirmed by the BBC article, that help shed light on this event. First, his age straddles 19 to 20, but ‘teen’ sounds better for the story. He did not ‘come out’ at this taping and the confrontation was not the result of the family’s reaction to the news. He had been open with his family for almost a year and the original coming out went without incident. In fact, the BBC reports his family was ‘supportive’ and his stepmother responded ‘positively.’ He was in a long-term relationship which he proudly displayed on his own social media. In the Dr. Drew CNN transcript it is stated that Pierce’s father was feeling shamed due to his son posting ‘bad things’ about him online but does not go into detail.
The Advocate, the BBC and CNN take the opportunity to divert the scenario’s details towards supporting the discussion of LGBT suicides and runaways and spend most of their words detailing generalities of why it is wrong to be abusive towards gay teenagers. The problem, it seems, is that this story just doesn’t fit that desired outcome. The narrative is that Pierce, like this assumed mass of other LGBT teenagers, was kicked out into the cold just because he was gay. Ironically the video evidence tells a different story.
He’s raised $93,000 in 3 days off this ruse.
He lied about a lot of stuff to get that money.
I bet he’s a Democrat.
With $93,000 he can now open a hair salon and give other homeless gay people jobs. Were he to do so, then good for him.
He won’t.
It is an inescapable fact that the world is overwhelmingly heterocentric – with straights comprising AT LEAST 97% of the population, how could it be otherwise. The popular culture until quite recently dared not mention homosexuality, and in most places homosexual activity was criminal under the law. Gay teens have been being kicked out of homes and have been being disowned for ages, and the fact that the suicide rate among gay teens is considerably higher than among their straight counterparts is no secret. This sad reality is a consequence of the fact that a significant portion of our population views homosexuality as an un-natural sin of choice, and people who hold this opinion tend not to be as loving and supportive of their gay children as they would be toward their heterosexual spawn. Over the years that a child gradually matures toward adulthood, this difference in treatment can have a profound effect on the child’s mental health, contributing to the development of familial hostilities, antisocial behaviors, and tendencies toward suicide. Back when homosexuality was poorly understood, these responses led some to consider homosexuality a mental illness, but when viewed in the context of the root causes of such symptoms, they do not seem so irrational.
Mr. Pierce’s case may not have been the best example with which to call attention to the lingering embarrassment of parental abuse of gay teens, that’s for sure. But such cases almost never present with documentary evidence of any sort, and it is understandable that those people who believe this to be a serious problem are rather desperate to be heard and are glad to get even flawed traction.
Nanny G: Would you feel better if Mr. Pierce had been awarded $93,000 for writing and submitting a compelling fictional short story to a magazine editor? Seems to me that “Fundmenow” is being used as a novel avenue for free enterprise, and an engaging story is worth money, whether fiction or fact.
Your assumption that Mr. Pierce is a Democrat because of the fictional liberties you suggest he took is rather myopic. More likely he is a Democrat because he is unwelcome in the Republican party, and because to date, every single advance in gay rights have come from the Democratic side of the isle.
@George Wells:
He’s not a teen.
He’s in his twenties.
That was a lie.
He’d been out for a while so it was another lie that he was springing his gayness on family.
Somehow he knew how to needle various family members to hit the proper buttons for this audio.
(If it was a REAL audio of relatives and not a radio-type fiction written by him for the cash.)
Visit the Gay Patriot for an education into Republican gays.
@Nanny G #4:
The article in question stated that at the time of the recording, Mr. Pierce’s age was “between 19 and 20.” 19-and-a-half is still a teen. Read it again. So where is the lie?
I know all about Republican gays. I know that the Log Cabin Republicans were for many years denied entrance to the Republican National Convention, and only this year were allowed in, but were not allowed to speak or to set up a display advocating any of their positions.
I’m 64 years old and still waiting to see or hear of the first gay rights initiative to come from the Republican Party.
The “Grand Old Party” has done nothing but fight against gay rights from day #1. They fought against the decriminalization of gay sex, they fought against including sexual orientation in antidiscrimination legislation, they pushed for a constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage NATIONALLY, they fought to keep gays out of the military, they have successfully defunded any efforts by the National Institutes of Health to collect statistics on gay teen suicide, they put together DOMA in the first place, and for the past hundred years have gone state by state pushing anti-gay rights laws through state legislatures and referendums calling for anti-gay state constitutional amendments to be enacted.
Every time a Republican suggests that the Party’s staunch anti-gay position might need adjustment, he is branded a RINO and his RNC funding dries up. Republicans would rather turn on their own than soften their position on gay rights.
Is it hate? I don’t know…
You tell me. When have Republicans pushed for a single gay right?
Pppppffffftttt!
Tell me, what “rights” have been withheld from homosexuals by the GOP?
@MAKAYA #6:
“Tell me, what “rights” have been withheld from homosexuals by the GOP?”
This question is raised periodically by people who have avoided learning the facts of the matter on which they comment. Most recently, Retire05 raised this question, insisting that the only right that married heterosexuals had that gay couples could not gain by legal device was the $255 death benefit granted to surviving spouses by the Social Security Administration.
I replied that here in Virginia, we have a Virginia Constitutional Amendment (called the Marshall-Newman Amendment) that was authored by Bob Marshall (a Republican delegate) and Stephen Newman (a Republican senator) and which was adopted by a veto-proof, Republican-dominated legislature. The Marshall Newman Amendment voided any and all legal devices that could be created to give gay couples any right or effect which would automatically convey upon the marriage of heterosexual individuals, including medical and durable powers of attorney, wills and any other devices which would otherwise be legal if the parties were unknown or unrelated. Federal Judge Wright ruled in the “Bostic v. Rainey” case that the Virginia constitutional amendment infringed upon rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and her decision was upheld by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, stayed for appeal to the Supreme Court. The Amendment is still part of the Virginia Constitution, it withholds rights from gay couples that strangers would have, and it is the product of Republican lawmakers.
When I reminded Retire05 of these facts, her answer was that I was free to move to a state where I DID have equal rights. Her statement, while true, also acknowledges that in Virginia, gays do NOT have equal rights, and the restriction of those rights came at the hands of Republican legislators.
Similar infringements of the civil rights of gay people have been the rule rather than the exception in most states for a great many years, and even as the country is now moving toward a wider acceptance of its gay citizens, Republican-dominated state legislatures have continued to advance legislation intending to restrict gay civil rights. Republican candidates for national office have been warned by their operatives to avoid talking publically about gay rights issues because the Party Platform position on them loses votes, but the issue is kept alive because it “energizes” the core evangelical base of the party, and without them, there is no hope of winning the White House. Here is the fine line between genius and madness.
Hahaha, nothing quite like a verbose, old queen trying to justify his perversions and mental illnesses…
@ThunderGod #8:
You have my condolences per your lack of reading comprehension.
I tried to justify nothing.
I politely answered MAKAYA’s question.
I am basically conservative and have maintained throughout my discussions here that I believe a society has a right to criminalize homosexuality under penalty of death if it so chooses. But having chosen not to go that route, our society is thus constitutionally obligated to treat all of its lawful citizens equally.
Unlike yourself, I understand the law, and everything I said in my post about Virginia law is accurate.
MAKAYA’s question is answered.
Laughing, you prove that ignorance is bliss.
Well done!
@George Wells:
Yep, you old queens are hilarious. It’s not too hard to read between the lines of of your posts.
Try that doorknob, it leads out of the closet. 😉
@ThunderGod: You do realize he has answered every question directed at him with facts and knowledge. Yet you resort to attacking the person making the argument rather then the argument itself. For this I pity you. You make yourself the fool every time you respond.