Spirit day

Awesome dad’s pitch-perfect note to his gay son’s bully goes viral

To celebrate Spirit Day, Queerty dug deep into the vaults to find some of our most uplifting and inspiring stories about overcoming bullying. These slice-of-life vignettes find our community smiling in the face of adversity, turning the other cheek, putting bullies in their proper place, and refusing to subscribe to any sort of self-victimizing narrative. Basically, these people kick ass and it’s time to salute them.

Meet Manny Gutierrez, the 25-year-old YouTuber and makeup guru who was just tapped to be the face of Maybelline’s new mascara campaign.

Manny has over 500,000 Twitter followers, 2.2 million YouTube subscribers, and 3.1 million Instagram followers. Of course, no one amasses that kind of social media following without also attracting a few haters along the way.

Earlier this month, internet troll/right wing blogger Matt Walsh tweeted a picture of Gutierrez, along with the caption, “Dads, this is why you need to be there to raise your sons”:

In response to the homophobic tweet attacking his son, Manny’s dad decided to speak up. Since he’s not quite as social media savvy as his son, he sent him a text message than asked Manny to share it on his own platform.

“I know the words you speak are from lack of knowing anybody from the LGBT community,” he wrote. “If you did, you would soon realize they are some of the most real and kind hearted individuals that walk this planet of ours.”

Here’s Manny Sr.’s full message:

The tweet quickly went viral, receiving more than 60,000 likes and 13,000 shares. And commenters can’t seem to get enough of Manny Sr.:

“He’s the best,” Manny wrote in response to one fan’s comment. “[I’m] so lucky to have him.”

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