Two Stories of People Being Awful

A Negative Review of Frozen

My dear friend Kathryn Skaggs author of "A Well Behaved Mormon Woman" blog, wrote a blog post, or rather, more of a theme paper on the movie Frozen. If she was a student at BYU, she would have probably received an A. She was thorough, had proof for her ideas, and wrote it well. Her theme for Frozen: "coming out of the closet" for homosexuals. This isn't a new idea taken from the movie. I have heard this from a number of people including my husband who took my younger children to see Frozen in the theater. In fact, many homosexual bloggers wrote a similar theme. Here are two examples: The Icy Closet – “Frozen” and Authenticity, and Love is an Open Closet Door in ‘Frozen’. They read very similar to Kathryn's with one difference. They are praising Disney for adding this theme to their movie and helping the gay movement and normalizing homosexuality. Kathryn was sending a warning to parents that this is teaching their children to believe in the arguments used by the gay lobby.


The homosexual bloggers were praised. Kathryn was beat upon by many, many people. In less than 48 hours, Kathryn was called names. She was told that she is the reason gay people want to commit suicide, and other people leave the church. She was told that she just "sees the gay in everything" or that she is a very negative person always looking for the bad. People said she was paranoid at best and evil at worst, and that she is definitely NOT "Well Behaved". The Huffington Post picked up her blog post mocking her more.

I felt awful for her. Can you even imagine 48 hours of your "friends" some family, and hundreds and hundreds of strangers across the nation telling you how awful you are because you dared to write your opinion of a cartoon? I think it's horrible!! and frankly weird that a movie could elicit so much anger.

Child Molestation Prevention in the Schools

Early Wednesday morning, I went up to the state Capitol Building to testify against a "child molestation prevention bill". Elizabeth Smart and her father were there to testify for the bill. A committee meeting had already been held on the Friday before. I was originally against the bill altogether because I do not want my kindergarteners taught about their private parts in school. After hearing enough children who had been molested saying a program like that may have helped them end the abuse or better fight off their attackers, I changed my stance a bit. Instead I testified that the majority of parents are good and are there protecting their children, but in order to do so, they must know what their children are being taught in schools. Originally the bill would not allow parents to know about the program in case parents were the criminals. In the end, the bill was amended so that parents will be informed and will have the option to remove their kids from that class. Later that day, Deseret News, KSL, and the local Fox news channels wrote about the committee meeting. The article mainly focused on Elizabeth Smart, but had a small quote from me. I saw that the KSL version was liked by a family member of mine on Facebook so I clicked on it and browsed through the Facebook comments. All of the comments were attacking poor Elizabeth Smart for supporting this bill. The people were not against the idea of child molestation prevention being taught in schools, they were just against Elizabeth Smart for not "getting over" her kidnapping and rape! I was horrified and astonished that complete strangers would attack her person so brutally  for trying to help other children who may end up her in situation. I was not on her team, but I respect her for doing what she feels is right. And come on, people being kidnapped and raped for 9 months at any age would be a lot to get over!!!!

From these two experiences I have learned that people online can be brutal! A friend of mine said, "I think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they react to someone they don't agree with, especially when they don't know that person. Name calling and falling-in with a group of name callers is especially telling." I agree with that. I doubt most of the people writing these hateful comments online would have even thought to say the same thing in person. But have they thought about what their mean comments say about them? 

Many years ago, I wrote a rather mean email to a school teacher that I disagreed with. I sent it and when my husband got home, I had him read it. He was astonished at how mean and inconsiderate I was. He knew that I would never had said those things in person. I did not name call in the email, I just strongly disagreed in a way that was hurtful to the teacher. That was a learning point and turning point in  my life. For years after, I never sent any written disagreements without checking with someone else first. I didn't want to ruin someone's day or make them cry or feel humiliated. 

I think most people don't want to ruin someone's day or humiliate them, and or especially make them cry. Most people are civil in person. We all should think twice about how we say something to someone online. These are real people with real feelings on the other side of the screen. We all have our own causes and our own opinions. There is no way we will all agree, but we can be careful about how we disagree.