This is heartbreaking. A 20-year old gay college student from Kennesaw, Georgia is confronted, assaulted and disowned by his own twisted, confused, cruel family, as captured on video…
The video went viral after it was published by Dan Savage on Wednesday.
Despite the incredibly disturbing video, in which Daniel Ashley Pierce’s father, stepmother, mother and grandparents confront him — at times violently — to go get therapy so he’ll stop being gay, or else move out of the house, there is a “happy” ending here, of a sort.
Pierce’s boyfriend set up a Go Fund Me site for him yesterday to raise $2,000 for him to live on, after being kicked out of the house and trying to find a new place to live.
By this morning, the video has been viewed nearly 2.5 million times, and the Go Fund Me site, which Pierce said he didn’t even know had been created, has raised some $66,500 for him. Thirty minutes ago he posted this updated note to supporters there:
As clueless, sad, twisted folks like Pierce’s family members wanted Daniel to seek (cruel and discredited) “Pray the Gay Away” therapy, perhaps it’s time someone sets up a “Pray the Hate Away” movement. We could really use one right about now.
[Hat-tip RAW STORY…]
That is a sickening way to treat anyone over sexual orientation, especially one’s own son. I’m nauseated.
(It is good to give credit to where it’s due, even if it to Raw Story. Raw Story was as rigid-minded as that boys parents when it “disowned” me from having the right to comment merely for defending myself against slander. I’ve avoided reading it since, much as you probably don’t feel the same about ThinkProgress after it unfairly smeared you and then stuck to that decision no matter what).
This is what “the word of god” leads people to: disowning and assualting their own children.
There are religious billboards in Los Angeles currently that state “love your enemies”.
Don’t these people have any idea what complete fools they make of themselves in using religion to hide behind hate?
It would be funny if it wasn’t so disturbing, as in the case of this young man. I am proud of him for holding his ground during the “conversation”.