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As teen suicides continue to rise, including a series at their neighboring Mentor High School, some students of North High School in Eastlake (Lake County) haven’t received the memo to grow up and stop the bullying as they mocked the uniform colors of rival South High School (Willoughby) with a gay slur during parts of Friday night’s football game.
And from the YouTube description:
“Powder Blue Faggots” – An appalling display of anti-gay slurs at a Cleveland Area local football game occured at the yearly rivalry game between Eastlake North High and Willoughby South High. No teachers or parents from the sidelines intervened to stop the problem, and this chant occured 3 times in the first 3 minutes of the game. I left 6 minutes into the first quarter- what a waste of $12.
What are the teachers teaching our children at Wiloughby-Eastlake Schools? With the combined efforts of Mentor High School’s gay-suicide track record, all of Cleveland’s Eastern city school districts need to be educated about bullying and hate crimes against gays and lesbians!
STOP THE HATE. STOP THE SUICIDES.SHOW SUPPORT.
My parents taught me better than this. Did you listen to your parents? And I was raised by a father wirh a handicap. I respect all other human beings, so who do you respect besides yourself???
16 Comments
But…but…but…But sports are supposed to build character. Guess this crowd didn’t get that memo, huh? They should be like Pete Rose, O.J. Simpson, Michael Vick, Ben Roethlisberger and scores of other pro athletes. I mean, those guys are just sloshing over with character, right?
A sigh cannot even begin to expressthe emotions this video brings out in me.
This is appaling.
I can’t believe they even allowed these people to go on with this chant.
Passive-Aggressive Queers need to stop whiningSo, the writer left without saying anything at all and waited days before whining and complaining.
It’s getting a bit tiresome to keep reading the same things over and over: ”I saw something terrible, but I didn’t do anything about it. I let it go on. Now that time has passed, I feel guilty so I’m going to talk about my feelings now.”
When will we learn that we need to stop WAITING for other people to do the right thing? When will we learn that we STAND UP AGAINST BIGOTRY REGARDLESS OF WHETHER ANYONE ELSE STANDS WITH US? When will we learn that WE are a part of the problem when we see bigotry right in front of our faces and we DO AND SAY NOTHING?
Passive-aggressiveness = FAIL
Americans confound me every day with their new levels of stupidityRead the comments on that video. I’m so tired of “We’ve done this for years — this is the way it’s always been” as some sort of justification for acting like a gang of nasty, fucking bigots.
Most people in this country have been brought up to think that what they do is right no matter what and are unwilling to ever do any sort of self-examination of themselves and their traditions. And anyone who does so is personally attacking them or blocking their free speech.
I contacted the school………via this webpage.
I left a message without four-letter words, and without biting language or commentary. I just expressed that I was stunned by the student behavior in light of the recent amount of student suicides that have been in the news, and asked that the school administration do something to address this.
More contact info
I’m thinking the coaches and Principal aren’t going to do much at the school level, it’s usually more effective to go up a little bit higher…
File a complaint under 4110.1 .iii
Read this page carefully:
http://www.weschools.org/paren…
Looks like they strive to account for the handling of each incident. Let’s find out.
BOARD OF EDUCATION:
PRESIDENT: Margaret.Warner@wescholls.org
VICE PRESIDENT: George.Petric@wescholls.org
MEMBER: Dan.Hoffman@wescholls.org
MEMBER: Connie.Newyear@wescholls.org
MEMBER: Sharon.Scott@wescholls.org
huh?since when i posting the evidence not doing anything? how is ONE kid supposed to stop THAT? she reported it so that it COULD and WOULD be dealt with. i wouldn’t call that passive-aggressive. i would call that smart. it wouldn’t have accomplished anything for her to yell at all those kids by herslef. i was a teacher, and when we were in the stands and kids acted like that, WE dealt with it.. our coach even called a time out once and addressed THE CROWD for the bullshit they were doing.
expecting one kid to stop this while it was in progress is ridiculous. thank her for doing the right thing and showing the evidence. dont’ belittle her for not fighting a one woman war at that moment that wouldn’t have won anything.
Willoughby won the game, thoughThe silver lining in all of this is that the “powder blue faggots” won the game 34-21.
As a native Northeast OhioanYou can see why I got the hell out. I see nothing has changed since I was growing up blighted there.
Even though Cuyahoga County (not sure about neighboring Lake County) is deep blue politically, and right-wing fundamentalism is less there than in other parts of Ohio-the Catholic Church is prominent there, and the whole region is saturated with aggressively homophobic sports machismo.
wowObvious troll is obvious. /facepalm
“Troll” is right.Couldn’t be any more obvious if he was living under a bridge.
Most people of privilege, that is.You posted pretty much the definition of privilege, in fact.
A victory of the lesser of two evils, I’m afraidAccording to the comments on that video from people at the school, the other team calls them the “Halloween Homos.” So it’s the bigot vs. bigot match.
Hatred is color blindBeneath the red and blue there is sometimes very little difference; the artificial binary is alive and serves it’s masters well. It’s as though the politicians saw how well blue and red defined and pitted gangs against each other in the 90′s and decided to scale up the psychology to the entire nation. Marvellous control tool.
The county I live in has a long standing reputation for being an earthy-crunchy form-a-commune-in-a-barn liberal Democrat stronghold. We consistently vote Deep Blue by an overwhelming percentage. We used to be a gay mecca too, though that has faded slightly in the last decade or so.
You see, we now also have an enormous number of churches. And Christian values override just about all others, apparently. It’s a matter of what you “feel in your heart” compared to “what you think might be right” (a quote from one of my coworkers). Ethics are hard. Morals are easy. Feeling good about who you vote for and where you shop is easy. Choosing how you treat others is hard, except for when you’ve been taught that it’s okay to harm.
The Democrats have learned their lesson well. ”Leftist” Christian fundamentalism is growing and the pious robes hide the bigotry beneath.
Ohio HS footballI spent the first 50 years of my life living in the football capital of the world, Canton, Ohio.
If you don’t like football you are a traitor. The video is a good example of the mindset of most of the people there.
They will go to any length to bad mouth the other team as well as vandilize schools and hang a likeness from a tree.
Ohio does not like gays. There is no protections and the cops don’t care.
My legal wife and I moved to the great state of Maryland and I have never felt so free to be myself. My neighbors are great and my flag is out every day. I could not hang a flag in Ohio.
Downtown Canton has changed because of the art community and I was safe at my job but I could not sit on my porch because of the hate people freely expressed.
As for doing something during the game, the person filming was smart to keep quiet. These people have a mob mentality and they could have turned on them.
For as progressive as Ohio once was, underground railroad and Quakers, it is equally backwards now.
Thank goodness we got out!
Hi, homie!I’m now safe, sound, happy, and sexually fulfilled, living with my girlfriend in Northern Virginia. (Arlington and Fairfax counties at least are gay-OK, however much the rest of VA might suck.) No doubt you’ve noticed all the Northeast Ohio expatriates flocking to the DC area.
I moved here in November 1991, on the very day that the news read: Based on the 1990 census, redistricting deleted one congressional district in NE Ohio (the one I moved from) because of population loss, and added a new one to Nova (the one I moved to), because of population gain. I felt like one molecule in a human tidal wave.
My ancestors migrated west out of Maryland in the 18th century, and by my grandmother’s generation had wound up in Cleveland. Now here I am back here, having taken it full circle. As Captain Beefheart sang, “The dust blows forward an’ the dust blows back.”