Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAnd looses.
January 10th, 2007
Ah, youth! A time of incredible optimism and idealism. A new Zogby poll of how young people view their lives, futures and politics (PDF: 892KB/45 pages) shows an encouraging outlook on homosexuality. While the 18-25 year old set (dubbed the “Gen Nexters” by Zogby) is nearly evenly split on the subject of gay marriage (47% favor, 46% oppose, 7% don’t know. Margin of error: 5%), they clearly don’t see gays and lesbians as a threat to society. Fifty-eight percent see homosexuality as a way of life that should be accepted by society, and 61% are in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to adopt.
Gen Nexters are also very likely to use a social networking website such as Facebook or Myspace — 44% have created a personal profile. These websites have become a forum where teens can begin to flesh out how they see the world and their place in it. Naturally, teenagers being who they are, are eager to share their thoughts, no matter whether they be misguided or profound. Take, for example, this Myspace blog by a 16-year-old student who goes by the moniker, “Doc Holidâ™ y“:
There simply is no respect anymore. No respect for beliefs, no respects for individualism, no respect for humanity. I just read my friend Emily’s note about a group called ‘Americans For Truth’ and I visited their website. It made me want to vomit and cry. …
Doc, I know the feeling. A cursory look around the so-called “Americans for Truth” website reveals an immaturity that would make any decent high school sophomore question the supposed wisdom of their elders. Doc may not have all his facts straight (what teenager does?), but his heart and passion are in the right place (and what teenager’s isn’t?).
But me, I’m not one to go looking around on Myspace for perspectives on gay and lesbian issues. Teens’ observations may be of tremendous interest to their peers, but they’re usually not something an adult would find worthy of comment. Unless that “adult” happens to be one Sonja Dalton, of Peter LaBarbara’s misnamed website “Americans for Truth”. She ran across Doc’s posting and became completely unglued:
I ran across this MySpace blog a few days ago. It merits note. I have sat in a number of school meetings where board members, administrators, and teachers insist that 15-16 -17 year old high school students are “mature” and “wise.” This teenager’s post will henceforth suffice as my response to that claim. It is full of typos, misspellings, incorrect punctuation, and (most importantly) misplaced emotion, arrogance, ignorance, poor logic, misinformation, and lies.
Now, mind you, I dedicated this website to the task of correcting the misplaced emotion, arrogance, ignorance, poor logic, misinformation, and lies of supposedly mature and professional adults who malign gays and lesbians. I’ll not invest my limited time and energy in monitoring teen websites. Besides, I find the thought of trolling through Myspace just a little bit creepy. But I’ll leave Sonja to it — maybe somewhere on Myspace she’ll find her intellectual equal. But she’ll evidently have to aim lower than a high school sophomore to find it.
Hat tip: Jody Wheeler
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