Fred Phelps, who led the gay-hating and headline-grabbing Westboro Baptist Church, passed away on March 19th of this year. TMZ eulogized him with a link to Kool & The Gang’s classic song “Celebration.” But it may be too soon to celebrate the passing of Fred Phelps’ ignorant views. Teen Vine star Nash Grier has picked up where Fred Phelps left off, bashing homosexuality on multiple occasions in the wake of his rise to fame.
Tyler Oakley, a successful digital voice in his own right, called attention to Nash Grier’s hate speech in a tweet this month. A website has kept a record of Nash Grier’s hate speech, and it appears to be authentic.
I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed because a lot of great brands have worked with Nash Grier. I personally know employees of MTV, which paid Nash Grier to promote “Teen Wolf.” I personally know employees of Dreamworks, which is reported by The Daily Dot to be backing a Nash Grier movie via their subsidiary, AwesomenessTV. Indeed, AwesomenessTV CEO Brian Robbins is quoted as calling the film “a natural next step” for Mr. Grier and his co-star.
Dreamworks and its subsidiary, AwesomenessTV, needs to publicly clarify their position on Nash Grier’s hateful homophobia. MTV needs to publicly clarify its position on Nash Grier’s hateful homophobia. The only “natural next step” is to expose this and other ignorant hate speech as content that does not reflect our values.
It’s not fair for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth to have their bullies emboldened as Nash Grier compares “HIV” to “fags.” It’s not fair to the adults who contributed to Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project, addressing the epidemic of LGBT youth suicide, for Nash Grier to preach discouraging hate from his social media thrones. It’s not fair to the employees of Dreamworks, MTV and any other brands who have worked with Nash Grier to see their companies chase his economic gravy train at any moral cost.
Promoting a false stereotype that HIV only affects gays to his millions of teen fans is extremely dangerous. https://t.co/W6X9MUrgUK
— Tyler Oakley (@tyleroakley) July 6, 2014
Martin Luther King was right in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
“Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
We need to be morally right in our dealings with hate speech whenever and wherever we see it in social media. The silence of those who do business with Nash Grier is deafening.
About the author:
Tay Zonday is a People’s Choice Award-nominated, YouTube Award-winning, Webby Award-winning singer-songwriter with more than 150 million video views on Youtube.
You ever noticed how christians look really unevolved? Must be why Nash Grier’s eyes are way too close together.
Agreed, you may not like Justin Bieber, but there was this “pastor” who bashed Justin for “looking like a girl” and called him an array of homophobic slurs, just take in mind that this was when Justin was 16/17 and still going through puberty, I think he trashed Justin’s hairstyle and called it girly or some shit, then he bought up bible verses to “justify” his hateful opinion, but, that pastor has short hair… Isn’t it wrong for one to cut their hair in the Bible? Also, the pastor looks like a pedophile anyway…
Nash grier is religious and he’s speaking for what he believes in when he knows he will get hate and plus he apologized for it and has stopped making immature comments
Unacceptable behavior gets called out as unacceptable. Hide behind religion all you want, but it’s still unacceptable, full stop.
And for the record: Jesus never said “hate the gays.” Just in case you haven’t checked scripture in a while.
I completely agree with you Tay! Great article!
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Don’t quote Martin Luther king on that shit he was not talking about gays he was talking about blacks
He was talking about “injustice” – it’s a concept with wide & varied applicability.
It’s any minority. Don’t be ignorant. Same stuff Harvey milk represented. Educate yourself. Skin color doesn’t matter. It’s all about civil rights.