Our post commending actress Ellen Page for her courage in coming out as gay attracted a lot of hostility and hate and hate speech — as well as positive and substantive comments. I have banned many from the page today. I will no longer tolerate hate speech in the guise of Christian belief with the usual irresponsible pick and choose bible quotes and talk of “sin” and hellfire. I have had enough of it, and I think the world has had enough of it too. Again, I commend Ellen Page for her bravery in coming out. I hope more celebrities and public figures will be inspired to do so. Anyone who thinks this does not matter is deceiving himself or herself. It matters very much. Gay people in all walks of life suffer from bigotry, bias, superstition, and ignorance. Hats off to Ellen Page! (And please do NOT come here to tell us publicly that you “don’t care.” If you don’t care, don’t expect us to care that you don’t care!).”
— Beloved writer Anne Rice, whose novelist son Christopher is gay, expressing her disappointment with antigay comments on her Facebook page after she congratulated actress Ellen Page for coming out publicly this weekend
Stache1
I will no longer tolerate hate speech in the guise of Christian belief with the usual irresponsible pick and choose bible quotes and talk of “sin” and hellfire. I have had enough of it, and I think the world has had enough of it too
Boy ain’t that the truth.
DShucking
(And please do NOT come here to tell us publicly that you “don’t care.” If you don’t care, don’t expect us to care that you don’t care!).”
That’s the most important message. On George Takai’s page about Ellen there were at one point over 11,000 comments from people forcefully and repeatedly declaring how little they care. smh
Provine
“I will no longer tolerate hate speech in the guise of Christian belief…”
Anne is confused on this point. Hate speech IS Christian belief.
Uisce
@Provine: You can say that again. She went from being one of the premier writers of hyper-smutty horror fiction to a re-initiated Catholic drone, only to recover her damn senses when her son comes out. She needs to stick to writing about omnisexual creatures of the night and to go back to throwing her fantastic annual Halloween ball. Those things that she was good at.
NateOcean
“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
MikeE
@Provine: Don’t confuse right-wing, literalist, fundamentalist christianity with ALL christianity. some denominations are very liberal and accepting of all. my husband and I were married in a Christian church, by a Christian reverend. there was nothing about hate at all in anything she ever spoke about.
DShucking
@MikeE: Thank you.
the other Greg
Homophobic Facebook Commenters? Is there any other kind?
Sorry – I’m naive and get most of my news from Queerty!
Tracy Pope
Right-wing media will complain about Anne Rice, confusing free speech with hate and bigotry.
@MikeE:
Spot on. And congratulations!
MK Ultra
I’ve seen a lot of the “who cares” response, too. Obviously if a coming out story enrages you so much you have to make a dick comment, you care.
robirob
Unfortunately every message board there is has those passive agreesive ‘who cares’ or ‘who is this celebrity anway, like, is he/she someone I should know?’ comments where douchebag posters place themeselves above all and declare everybody a loser for caring or knowing who the discussed celebrity is.
I doubt there would be an unemployed person left if message boards of this world hire extra help to deal with those messages (delete them, move them to a separate message board section, ban the posters and make sure those internet users remain banned, etc.).
robirob
sorry, passive agressive
Will L
Bravo for her! She said it so eloquently.
While I had been wavering over religion for some time now, all this “Christian love” that I’ve seen the past few years is what cinched it for me. I want no part of it. I am now a practicing Buddhist.
greyhound1954
Welcome to the real world, Anne Rice. She should see the trash written daily by readers of the Yahoo.com sports pages. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of bozos that curse Yahoo for posting stories about gay athletes because they either hate gays or say they don’t care but are sick of hearing about gays. Stop throwing you sexuality in my face, say the haters. And yet when a story is posted about an NBA player’s fiance wanting a pre-nuptial agreement, these same bozos can’t say enough, and fail to see how the NBA star’s sexuality is being thrown in their faces.
northwest
I’ve never read any of Ann Rice’s books, but now I feel I MUST. Bravo to her for speaking out so strongly against the hateful bigots.
Cam
Good for Rice,
And off topic, funny, I thought Putin said that visitors to Sochi wouldn’t be arrested.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/sports/olympics/transgender-former-member-of-italian-parliament-detained-in-sochi.html?_r=1
balehead
She’s kidding right??…She follows the money too…
Evji108
@MikeE: True Christians need to reclaim their religion. They have allowed the haters to turn their religion into a place of negativity and non-spirituality. I fault the good Christians for not fighting back publicly to refute the haters-in-the-name-of-Christ. When the good do nothing to oppose these nasty people, they themselves are responsible for the fall of their religion.
charwegl
@Provine: That’s so fucking ignorant. I’m gay and I’m a Christian. True Christians that follow Christ shudder at the things that are done in his name. You can fault us for not fighting as much as we should to combat it but it’s a very ignorant stance to assume all Christians to hate gays, especially when many are gay.
Darling Nikki
Anne is a very nice person (having met her once, but her son quite a few times). And this is no different than what she says in person, she is an ally.
Niall
@MikeE: Except that the right wing christian belief is actually MAJORITY of christian belief and the church you got married in is only a small minority(very small in fact)
Niall
@charwegl: Of course not all Christians hate gays, but do you deny that those are the minority and the majority of Christians are actually the homophobic, judgey types? And I’m not referring to the US or Europe alone, but worldwide.