An Open Letter to Tyler Chase Harper

Dear Tyler,

I recently read about your run-in with the powers that be at your school about an offensive message on your t-shirt. Yours is only the latest in a long string of t-shirt censorship at public schools. I follow these stories pretty closely. A few years ago, a student wearing a Korn t-shirt was suspended from his high school in Michigan. I was pretty pissed about that. Then there was the story about a shirt with the word "vegan" getting a kid suspended in Utah because the school has a no-tolerance policy on gangs. You see, some straight edge kids are vegan, and some straight edge kids are violent, so according to the school, all vegans are members of a violent gang. This one was hard to get angry about -- in the same way that it's hard to be mad at the man who yells at his penis on the subway: sometimes people are a lost cause and you just have to clean up after they shit themselves.

Alas, this should be about you. This is your fifteen minutes, brave warrior of free speech. You proudly, and in the face of the conservative oppressors, wore shirt bravely questioning the tyranny of ... homosexuality. Yes, in the noble tradition of Martin Luther King Jr, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Boston Tea Party -- well, maybe not them; that whole tea party thing sounds a little fruity -- you stood up for the rights of your people and against their brutal oppression under the iron fist of the gay majority. You inspire me to think that one day those of us born with the heterosexual handicap may be free to marry the opposite gender, or to teach in public schools.



Your bravery has given me the courage to admit something. I too am straight. Yes, it's taken me years to come to terms with it, and I'm always praying that one day there will be a cure for this horrible affliction, but for right now, it's who I am. The trouble is that some people can't accept me. I'm afraid to show any affection to my girlfriend in public for fear that someone will see me and follow me down a dark alley to beat me up. I read stories like that in the papers every day. "Just another breeder dead," my family laughs. I don't think I'll ever have the courage to come out to them. It pains me to say this, but they're so tolerant and rational.



So, you backwards, homophobic prick, I salute you! Your ignorant, anachronistic hate-mongering is a shining beacon to everyone who strives for a new renaissance, an enlightenment that may lead to a world wherein discrimination and hate based on two-thousand-year-old myths are welcomed into our public schools; a world where words like 'equality' and 'tolerance' exist only as vestiges of our past; a world where 'science' is relegated to the history books.

Never stop fighting the good fight, you hateful little zealot!

P.S. - Some news stories are indicating that you prefer to go by your middle name, Chase. I just wanted to give you a little heads-up that Chase is about the queerest name I've ever heard. You might not want to have people calling you that around Jesus.