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Dreadful Human Being Ann Coulter Names Monday ‘National Disown Your Son Day’

Posted by on Oct 17, 2012 in Oh Hell No! | 19 comments

Dreadful human being (or robot giving a dreadful performance as a human being while its empathy sensors are on the fritz) Ann Coulter has a terrible idea that will keep her safely entrenched in the talk show circuit for weeks to come.

Let’s follow up last Thursday’s National Coming Out Day with a new holiday that homophobic parents can enjoy. That’s right, next Monday is National Disown Your Son Day!

GLAAD is having none of it.

I recognize that this is a joke, and that she is not really taken seriously in any context anyway, but with this coming right after National Coming Out Day, at the start of Ally Week and just days before Spirit Day, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about this idea of hers. There was a time in our culture’s history when, if thousands of LGBT kids were to come out on the same day, the next week genuinely would be exactly what Ann describes, all across the country. Fathers disowning their sons and kicking them out onto the street. Mothers locking up their daughters or sending them to charm school. Children forced to undergo electro-shock or even worse forms of “therapy” to rid themselves of their orientation. To learn how to not be true to themselves.

And although we’ve come a long way from those ideas as a cultural collective, I have no doubt that last week, more than a few American households experienced the tragedy that Ann joked about. Approximately 50% of LGBT youth experience some degree of family rejection. There are as many as 100 thousand homeless LGBT youth on our nation’s streets, and it’s estimated that LGBT youth make up as much as 40% of our nation’s homeless youth population. LGBT youth who are completely rejected by their parents are more than 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide. Pretty funny, right?

Speaking as a former unwilling celebrant of this exact type of fun fest (my parents kicked me out when I was TWELVE for being gay), I’d like to request that we never speak of this senseless, awful person again.