Homophobic Bullying

LGBTQ

I

My third anthology, Being Gay Being Bi Whatever, published in 2013 through an American publisher is a result of criticism for writing “gay” material in my first two anthologies, Idle Thoughts and Meanderings.

Metaphorically, I looked my critics in the eye, including those with strong but very narrow religious beliefs, gathered all of the gay material from the two anthologies and promptly placed them into the third anthology and gave it the title Being Gay Being Bi Whatever.

As a good friend put it, …hell’s bells! That’s a double decker bus title. It catches your eye and stays with you for the day.

I speak it as it is. I am not in the business of writing butterfly-type flower-power poetry that has everyone waxing lyrical.

I prefer to tell it as it is. There are far more accomplished writers who can work the charm offensive. Nor am I into offloading baggage to the unwitting reader.

II

If you are dealing with homophobia, read The Trilogy. The links are below. If you’re a parent trying to work out how it could possibly be that your son or daughter is ‘one of those’, again, read The Trilogy. You might not like it, but you might also be heartened by the ending.

Trilogy comprises:

Sweet Seventeen

Conscience

Comeuppence

and then

Reconciliation.

http://www.ianbradleymarshall.co.uk/poetry/2012/7/20/the-trilogy-sweet-seventeen-conscience-cumuppence.html

Reconciliation

http://www.ianbradleymarshall.co.uk/dispatches/2013/5/23/in-the-wake-of-woolwich.html

They are linked to the FA Homophobia film clip - all of 1.03 minutes - (link below) because I take the guy in that clip and portray him as a young dad who comes face to face with reality when his eighteen year old son, Mark, in Sweet Seventeen informs him that he is gay. 

What follows is a scene played the world over, in many family households.

I'm proud of this work, for sure. 

I was not proud of, nor impressed, by the LGBT community in Manchester, when they told me that there would be no problem in promoting the book if 'a wad of dollars' preceded it by way of donation.

That is why I am on the periphery. I do not speak the party jargon.

III

Be Warned

Being Gay Being Bi Whatever (BGBBW) is not an ordinary poetry book. It is not sent out free of charge so that it just sits on the book shelf hidden.

Take for instance the pastor of some peculiar church in 2013-14, who set up a website, then created a church full of LGBT guys, who would write about the poems they found in BGBBW … then request for a signed dedication to himself, ‘it would mean so much to me’. Then a request for ten signed copies to ten of the congregants … ‘and if you could put a personalised message in each one that would be even better, you know, mentioning the poem each has been so inspired by, and addressing it to them each by their christian name.’

In retrospect, the fraud is not only blatant, it is obvious.

Fraud sneaks up behind, it walks with you, befriends you, and then walks away while you’re paying for the meal you’ve both enjoyed. Did I say something? Then Fraud commences that game of hide-n-seek. Better known as the stalker.

And then the blacksmith’s anvil drops on you from a great height!

IV

If a person beguiles … drop that person immediately.

If a person, having secured from quite expensive gifts - in this case ten signed books free of charge - and replies with a mere emoji thumbs-up and and never again mentions them … we have the measure of the character and personality we deal with.

V

As in the case of that odd ‘pastor’ in Wales - a man with criminal intent, a man with a church that did not exist, a man with young people “all coming to God” who were figments of his imagination - then run like hell’s on your trouser belt, in the opposite direction!

VI

If a person has a website that :

(a) mirrors one’s personal website

(b) is plagiarist

(c) gushes out fulsome praise in a so-called written sermon that the only picture is that of a bunch of parishioners groaning as they stick their fingers down their throat - take hold of this thought when wrestling with conscience, that it would be a spiteful thing to report the matter, for surely it is a ‘one-off’…!

One-off be damned! The ‘pastor’ will have a whole host of vulnerable, not venerable, people.

This is the dark side of social media, for it does not take one long to realise that we have no idea what this person even looks like.

VII

BGBBW is meant to:

• help people to gain new perspectives

• help parents to understand a little more about sexuality

• and to move away from this idea that sexuality means opposite sex only

Sexuality is a colossal subject, and I'm saddened and angry that every religion has made a complete hash of this subject from day one. As we remove the covers, more and more we discover that beneath those covers some could not, and others simply would not, curb their desires.

Beware, too, of he or she who prefers to run with the hare and the hounds.

VIII

Religion and faith are two different things, they do not meet.

I know which one I choose. Religious ritual rarely equates to personal faith. An outward shout - ‘look at me. Look how righteous I am’.

I remember thinking this, seeing a lady in full garb break off from we passengers, suddenly walk away from us in haste, stand on the tarmac of the very busy airport and commenced endless bows to the ground, kissing cement, then standing up only to go down again for the umpteenth time. I was very glad I was on a short flight. I have no patience with bums raised to the sky.

I have even less patience with unwanted shows of self-righteousness and ‘holier than you’ bods!

Even less, is the measure I give to those who see me as an infidel.

IX

When the universe began, sexuality was whole and complete. Everything was evolving. Creation is wonderful and remarkable. The Universe is mind-blowing.

Then humankind decided to codify life, and through their various religions to set down do’s and don'ts. Except that when it came to sexuality, the code writers couldn't quite guide their esteemed minds through and around the subject.

X

Grasp the nettle!

Youth leaders, teachers, pastors DO your homework. You have young lives in your charge and reading material is meant to be read, inwardly digested and then disseminated.

Lead from the front.

Be an example.

Allow the light to shine out of you.

But do your homework.

I say again - Lead from the front!

Stand up and be counted.

Don't expect to tackle this subject without having plenty of weapons in the armoury, because sexual bigotry, like racial hatred, is one of the most difficult to tackle.

And understand this too. We are born with our sexuality.

I say that again …

We are born with our sexuality

If my sexuality is good enough for God, then it's good enough for everyone. Period.

What? Am I advocating a free-for-all? No way!

Live and let live.

If you watch this FA sixty-three second clip and then read the trilogy, the third poem is all about this guy coming to earth with a bump, but more importantly, everything working out well.

28 February 2021
All Rights Reserved

© 2022 Ian Bradley Marshall

Banner image by Anastasia Dulgier via Unsplash. chosen for its depth, and its implication.

It was fun, imagining the bikes having a chit-chat in the absence of the riders.

“What do you mean, I’m inferior?
You’ve all got two wheels,
I’ve got two wheels.
We’re all the same!”