Courtesy of
Daily Mail:
The mother of a two-year-old boy has been left shaken after a Walmart customer knocked a pink headband off the head of her son and called him a f****t.
Katie Vyktoriah claims that her son was verbally and physically abused after she stopped off at the Florida store with her two children on Thursday night.
Her oldest child Dexter, who loves to dress up - from superhero costumes to sparkly outfits - was wearing his mother's lace flower headband which he had been playing with earlier in the day.
Ms Vyktoriah was at the check out when a large man with a beard, and wearing tattered shorts and a camouflage shirt, yelled out: 'That's a boy?', according to the Huffington Post.
He then grabbed the headband and threw it to the bottom of the shopping cart before cuffing Dexter lightly around the side of his head and saying with a laugh: 'You'll thank me later, little man!'
In her shock and anger that a stranger had touched her child, Ms Vyktoriah told the man: 'If you touch my son again, I will cut your damn hands off.'
The 31-year-old claimed the man then looked at her child in disgust and said: 'Your son is a f****** f****t. He'll get shot for it one day.
"A large man with a beard, and wearing tattered shorts and a camouflage shirt." Why am I not surprised by that description?
And as for the little boy getting shot someday, if it happens I have little doubt the gunman will be dressed in similar fashion to this asshole.
I am not sure what is more troubling, this idiot's lack of knowledge about human sexuality, his lack of intelligence when it comes to parenting, or his lack of fashion sense.
You know years ago I worked at a camp that served school age children.
There was one five year old little boy who spent a lot of his time playing in the dress up area rather than with the Hot Wheels, Legos, and Tinkertoys in the other parts of the facility.
He liked to put on pink feather boas, a tiara, and a skirt, and then twirl around making the skirt fan out around him. Needless to say most of us more or less assumed that he would grow up to be gay, and all of his teachers and his mother were fine with that possibility, and nobody tried to "correct" his play. This was over twenty years ago.
Fast forward to about five years ago when I see this handsome young man walking with his gorgeous wife and newborn son through a local mall.
It took a moment, but I recognized the new father as that same little boy with the feather boa at camp.
Clearly nothing about his youthful play had determined his sexuality, just like I have no doubt that many young boys playing soldier with their friends, or building model cars with their dads today will someday recognize that they like boys in a way that their peers like girls.
If we have learned nothing else from living in the age of the internet we should realize that human sexuality is very complicated, and that bullying or shaming somebody does not change who they are, it only makes them hide it from the world for fear of being judged or, as this guy threatened, hurt or killed.
Fortunately for this little boy he is growing up in time of increasing acceptance, so if he IS gay he will not have to hide it, He can be who he is and expect to be accepted.
However unfortunately for the guy who assaulted him, being an asshole will ALWAYS be socially unacceptable, and so will wearing camouflage unless you are tracking deer or attending a Halloween party.
