One Visible Gay Marine, a Thousand in Shadows
I felt that it was important to put this image right here, in my blog, on the internet, where it would be easily visible. It needs to be seen — it will be seen.
Pictured is Tim Smith, a former US Marine, "honorably discharged after a military minister outed him." (source) Last week, as one in a series of five billboard images created by the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center to celebrate National Coming Out Day (11 October, annually), this image was pasted on a billboard in Memphis, Tennessee.
Friday night, vandals shredded the billboard at the corner of Poplar and High Street near Downtown Memphis. The billboard featured a local man who was in the Marines and forced out of the military under the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy. [source]
"Shredded" is not hyperbole; the vandals tore off every bit of the offending image from the billboard so that not even a shred of the write background remained.
"It felt like somebody had violated the honor and commitment that we as military veterans feel about our service," Smith said in an interview Monday. [cource]
What is the wellspring of the hatred that would so enrage these vandals to try to obliterate this image? Why would the Mormon and Catholic churches waste tens of millions of dollars trying to scuttle marriage equality for gay and lesbian people? Why did police in Texas and Georgia invent a pretext to raid gay bars and physically assault patrons? Why? Why? Why?
All of these groups of haters — who feel that being labeled "haters" is unfair and uncomfortable — try to maintain that they don't actually hate gay and lesbian people. No one believes them any longer, except, perhaps, their self-delusioned followers.
Oddly, these groups of haters are surprised, sometimes even shocked that their actions now call attention to themselves along with disapprobation from their community. Homosexuals, just a few decades ago, used to be such an easy target. Whatever happened to the good-old days?
One billboard is torn down, a thousand reproductions appear all over to torment the vandals who can't face their inner demons.
Also see: Andy Towle, "Coming Out' Billboard Featuring Gay Soldier Destroyed in Memphis", Towleroad, 27 September 2009.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Tuesday, 29 September 2009 at 21.13
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Might've been some church-inspired hate group. It could just as well have been a couple of meth-fueled examples of trailer trash out for their pathetic version of a good time. Whoever it was, they should be rounded up, prosecuted and made to pay for their vandalism.