nightscanner59

nightscanner59's Journal

September 19, 2015

"Religious Freedom" my ass. Charlotte mayoral candidate proposes jailing all gays.

Inspired by the faux persecution complex publicly heralded by the religious right, a Charlotte, N.C. area mayoral candidate is now actually running on a platform of imprisoning all gays. Read it and facepalm:
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/09/mayoral-canddidate-inspired-by-kim-davis-vows-to-eradicate-gays-by-throwing-them-all-in-jail/
I am sick and tired of the layer cake of bullshit this ilk is perpetuating. "Religious Freedom" to restrict the freedoms and pursuit of happiness of an entire demographic they just happen to disagree with just makes me ill.
Oh, yes, they're so damn persecuted they are jailed, beaten, hospitalized, brutally bullied, denied housing, jobs, love and understanding, tied to fences beaten and left to die overnight, these, poor, poor American Christians....
Er, wait a minute... I tinks me may habba-gotten something backwards there.
My hackles just raise up from my PTSD layer-cake about this one. I'm the teenage runaway from an extraordinary bullying situation and parental abuse and neglect. I dumpster-dived, did odd jobs, even street-walked my body for a living thanks to those who are displaying how terribly persecuted they are. I survived a brutal anti-gay hate crime 5 years ago involving and extended hospital stay and multiple surgeries to correct boot-inflicted facial fractures only after a vehicular assault to render me largely unconscious to begin with. As it was before the ACA, and my medical insurance pulled a dirty trick to discontinue my coverage related to my injuries (now illegal, btw), I lost my home, a classic car and all my retirement savings to pay off extensive my medical bills. I have directly been denied housing, unjustly dismissed from two job positions by new "christian" managements who cleansed their departments of us horrible LGBT. I still have nightmares of how long, when I was young teenager that "fucking faggot" replaced my name. Yet it is just this so called "christian" ilk that many a member has and still is advocating rights restriction to outright brutal acts of violence against LGBT. What a crock.
To this kownty klerk and all the religious right ilk displaying their faux persecution complex... the likes can take their fake morality and all the evil it has produced and shove it right up their fat pretentious asses.
And that's all I got's to say about that.

September 5, 2015

About 14. But it was an extended hair-rasing realization, at first, for me.

My older brothers realized my preferences long before I acknowledged such. I wish they'd given me more (information, courage), but being preoccupied with their own adolescent conundri, I was on my own.
Here was the real shocker to me. Over 2 years I was coming to the realization I was homosexual. This was the early 1970's in a very small, isolated and backwards western cowtown. The only resources available in our school library were published in the 1950's (not unusual, the local population had voted down any education-related funding, ordinances, support for years. our building were overcrowded and resources so old and useless it was ridiculous) and... listed "homosexuality" as a disorder to be treated, hospitalized, electrocuted, shunned, oh my fucking ghod.
I kept my deep, dark secret to myself for 2 years. Some of the materials I had read referred to homosexuality as a "stage" towards heterosexuality. So I kept waiting for the "change" to come around, that never came.
I know I was 14 when I finally mustered up the courage to talk to someone about it. One of my older, occasional babysitters, Debra, was a "hippie", and very open-minded. She enlightened me to a few things, that at least I wasn't alone, that there was a great movement for homosexuals to live openly that started with some riot in NYC, but... she still damaged me with "It's probably a phase you'll grow out of".
The same year, I made a mistake. Oh, I made a horribly miscalculated trust mistake. I told one of my closest friends (suddenly my nemesis after) that when I grew up I didn't want to marry a woman, I wanted to marry another man.
My life went straight to shit. The next two years were sheer hell until I ran away from the bullying. I even had an ugly encounter with the master of hate himself, Fred Phelps, whose extended relatives lived in our town. They held a "hate fest" in my honor, a trick: invited me to "party" at their house that I quickly realized was an ugly ritual "send my soul to hell" gathering. There was no outreach, no love, nothing but the ugliest man I've ever seen in my life spitting and screaming in my face. Needless to say I didn't hang around for this long.
But the bullying from all peers escalated on the Phelp's families fanning the flames. No one, not my parents, no faculty, no authority lifted a finger to protect me. My mother's words in response to her attitude change towards me: "Love you? I don't even like you anymore". Between that and all that I knew was one odd factoid Debra had told me 2 years earlier: something about San Francisco being a refuge for homosexuals.
After a few trial runaways to local friends, to come back home to no better conditions each time and winter coming on fall of 1976, I'd had it. I packed up a large backpack with all the clothes and food I could steal and was gone before morning. It was snowing, but I got rides all the way there.
Coming out can be a very convoluted process. I will tell you I very nearly ended my life hanging from a freeway overpass one night I spent under one with all the PTSD in my head from my rough adolescence. I had very little contact with my parents until many years later when my other half attempted a forced reconciliation, a hair raising surprise to find out he'd flown my parents out to visit just before I graduated from college. He was sorry he did that. And I'm afraid my coming out was not pleasant for either side of the equation. I lambasted them up one side and down the other until my mother was in tears and my dad took her to a motel room.
I explained to Eldon that I appreciated what he'd attempted, but he realized himself this wasn't going to turn into the happy family reunion he'd planned.
I can't change the past. I have to swallow and just live with the PTSD nightmares of it all which even nearly 40 years later sometimes still haunt me. If I could sue every last idiot who made my coming-of-age into a nightmare I'd leave them every bit as devastated as I was as a turnabout fair play. The list of defendents in the case would be quite long. But I assure you I have thought about class-action towards the Phelps bunch. I've thought about it a lot. It makes me wonder how many other young lives have been wrecking-balled by their hateful "ministry".
Sorry for the long explanation, the whole thing is a novel in the works with lighthearted spiritual details mixed in. Had my circumstances been different, I'd have busted out of that scary closet at 14. I cringe that there are still the likes of this dipshit county clerk attempting to demonize gays.
I am so happy to see this day when our president himself said: "It gets better". I'm shouting from the rooftops inside that we got our day in court to no longer accept second-class citizenship. I keep the ugly angry monster who wants vengeance in check.

Profile Information

Name: Johnathan
Gender: Male
Hometown: do I have a home?
Home country: USA
Current location: San Franciso Bay Area
Member since: Sun Aug 15, 2010, 04:05 PM
Number of posts: 802

About nightscanner59

As a 16 y.o. runaway from extreme peer bullying and parental neglect; specifically after being \"outed\" in a redneck town, it was one fat, boisterous idiot of a preacher who instrumented the lynch mob who literally \"ran me out of town\". This was precisely the hateful crap he was stirring that caused incidental mob mentality that I know nearly a whole certain town is horrified to look back upon. Fred Phelps himself was invited, and drove all the way there to head up this riot. It was like something out of a horror flick: invited to a \"party in my honor\", that was quickly revealed to be a hatefest, with Fred Phelps himself at the helm. From the moment I walked in the door he lit into an in-my-face spitting litany of my evils with family and community members teasing and touting \"praise cheezus\" all around. I left with a whole crowd chasing me down the street. I only stayed home long enough that evening to pack a backpack and head out, never to return. This was after many other pronounced anti-gay incidents that were escalating in severity. I\'ve spent my whole life attempting to live down that moment. If I could sue every one of the idiots who took part in that dipshit scenario I would not hesitate for one second. Odd conflict with me is, being very, very lucky to have run across a gay pedophile (if you will, he had more genuine humanitarian interest in getting me off the street than playing with my pee-pee) who sheltered, fed and street-schooled me till I was nearly 18. December 2009 I was doored off my bicycle in what was highly suspected as an anti-gay crime. Reason being I kept having drive by \"Faggot\" yelled at my home, then the same spray painted on it, within a couple months of this happening. I cannot identify my attackers. It came unexpectedly, so suddenly, and I was too dazed only to realized I was being repeatedly kicked in the head. It took a sort of hypnosis and drug enhanced therapy to recall what I could at a University PTSD study I participated in: but during that EMDR-like sessions I realized that I had been kicked in the head something on the order of 100 times by my attackers, I could smell strong whiskey and they were laughing and making homophobic comments. I\'m a radiologic technologist with over 20 years experience in CT and Xray. Unfortunately I have limitations to my physical ability to perform my chosen profession, due to pinched nerves in my neck. Insurance companies have rejected me for all plans. I have taken what Xray assignments I can. I\'m fortunate not to have lost most of my cognitive abilities, but I\'m not who I was before this occurence, by any long shot. I can no longer ride a bicycle or a motorcycle due to chronic dizziness. I\'ve had dozens of chronic ear infections since. My right eye still has a partially detached retina. I\'ve been opiate free for 6 months now, but still have some days I have trouble with old fractures. I am documented TBI case now basically multiple post concussive syndrome. I still want to work, and live much like I did before this happened but it is very difficult. I have difficulty sometimes forming sentences verbally in proper syntax, and have to go kind of slowly at this. I refuse to become dependent on SSDI though, because I still don\'t really have a home. I sold the house there in Arizona, still have some ranch property in Radiator Springs! But this fucked up all my plans for building a home there. Its still a campout. I\'ve finally paid off over 10,000 dollars worth of debt this attack caused me. State of Arizona refused me victims of crime compensation. (R) bastards. I\'m living on the edge of homelessness still. Only a few places have been understanding of my limitations, however, which are not severe, but ever present. I\'m hoping to go back to one of the best jobs I\'ve had, but things aren\'t as lucrative for rad techs as they were years ago. Albeit my past is bitter, has made some mediocrity seem sweet ever since.