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via Mick Haupt/Unsplash
A child looks really upset on a playground.

Robbie Pierce, his husband, Neal Broverman are no strangers to bigotry. The men and their two young children were traveling on an Amtrak train in California in 2022 when they were harassed by a fellow passenger at a stop in San Jose; an incident that made headlines.

"All of a sudden, there was a man standing there next to me," Pierce told The Advocate. The man told their son, "Remember what I told you earlier. They stole you and they're pedophiles," Pierce recounts. The man also said that gay people are abominations. (Broverman is the editorial director for print media at Pride, The Advocate's parent company.)

The police were called and the man was thrown off the train, but the incident was a frightening reminder that gay families could be the target of bigots any time and anywhere, even in liberal Northern California. "It's a new level of homophobia out there," Pierce added.

Seven months later, Pierce’s son was the victim of harassment, this time from a child at a park.


lgbtq families, religious trauma, indoctrination, gay, lgbtq, bullying, hate, advocacy, parenting, lgbtq parentingA day at the park turned hateful and confrontation for Roobie Pierce and his son.Dakota Lim/Unsplash

"A random unattended 7-year-old at the park told me and my son that gay people are the devil,” he recounted in a viral X thread. "My son scoffed, but the boy said it was true because God said so."

Maybe it was the incident months prior. Maybe it was a lifetime of harassment and judgment. But whatever it was, in that moment, Pierce had had enough. He reacted to the boy’s hatred — which he probably learned at home — with his own lesson.

“I told him parents made up God to make their Kids do what they want. His eyes got so big,” he wrote on X.

It's worth wondering: Did God really 'say so'? Biblical scholars are split on the Bible's true message around homosexuality. It appears open to interpretation, and it's clear that many people choose to interpret the words in a hateful and negative way, going so far as to show their children that it's OK to approach and confront gay people over their identities.

Addressing complex issues like religion and sexuality with a young child, who’s a stranger, is a tricky needle to thread, so Pierce admits he had some reservations about his response. But he stands by his decision.

“I'm sorry but if you teach your kids to hate I'm going to teach them to disobey you," he wrote on X.

As someone who has been harassed by religious, homophobic people in the past, Pierce took the opportunity to help steer a young child away from hatred. At the age of 7, most children believe whatever their parents tell them. However, Pierce planted a seed in the child’s mind that may one day encourage him to challenge his indoctrination when he gets older. The kid will likely remember that interaction for many years to come, and may look back at it with shame one day. That shame could be the much-needed catalyst for change.

"I was shocked at first and then...well...you may have planted a seed to grow a fine human out of the little homophobic bigot he was being trained up as. I can't argue with that," one user wrote on X.

The vast majority of commenters on X agreed with Pierce’s response to the child’s comment.

However, some people thought Pierce’s response to the child was inappropriate.

Bigoted words or not, it was still a child, and many people thought there may have been a more tactful way to teach the kid a lesson rather than invalidating his entire faith. Or perhaps Pierce could have tracked down the boy's parents and given them an earful instead.

One thing is clear: Something in our culture is definitely broken when we're more intent on policing people's responses to bigotry and hate versus addressing the root cause of these divides. The boy's parents should be the one on trial in the court of public opinion for teaching their son that this kind of behavior is acceptable.

No matter how one feels about Pierce’s reaction, what’s clear is that there is something very inappropriate about a 7-year-old child openly harassing LGBTQ families. The unfortunate problem is that this type of hyper-religious upbringing can cause lasting emotional and psychological trauma to a child. And it’s a common problem. A recent study in the growing field of religious trauma found that 1 in 3 Americans suffer from trauma related to religion at some point in their life.

While we might be quick to dismiss the child’s behavior as innocent or simply as a symptom of growing up in a religious household, the more we learn about religious trauma, the more these children appear to be the victims of abuse. Hopefully Pierce's words will help the boy rethink his relationship with his faith, and his parents, down the road.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

You've probably noticed that anti-Muslim sentiments have become more common and more blatant recently.

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris by ISIS (or, if you like, Daesh) extremists and the mass shooting in San Bernardino by two people who claimed to be Muslim, a lot of Americans are allowing their thinking to be replaced by fear. Some people are even reacting violently.

Others are working hard to find justification for their beliefs — even if they're not acting out.

One of the things I've noticed is that in support of anti-Muslim comments, many people keep offering up quotes from the Quran.


Image by Metropolico.org/flickr.

They do that as justification for their belief that Islam is founded on violence and that the religion teaches its followers to act violently — and as such, we should be worried that any Muslim could be a violent terrorist. I've also seen several people refer to the marriage of very young girls as being in the Quran — as justification that Islam is just incompatible with Western ways of life.

I mean ... sigh.

I think most rational people know better. But for those who don't, some folks carried out a little experiment to make a point.

They took a Bible and wrapped it in a different cover, making it appear to be a Quran.

All following GIFs and images by Dit Is Normaal, a group based in the Netherlands. The video is in Dutch and subtitled in English.

Then they found some passages that aren't exactly compatible with the way most Westerners live these days.

Passages like:

"A woman should live in quietness and full submission."

"If you reject my commands and abhor my laws, you will eat the flesh of your own sons. And your own daughters."

"I don't allow for a woman to teach. You will have to cut off her hand. Do not forgive her."

"If two men sleep with each other, they will both have to be killed."

When the interviewers asked passersby what they thought of those passages, they were honest.

Believing they were being read passages from the Quran, people reacted with surprise, disgust, and negativity.

The interviewers also asked how the Quran compared to the Bible.

That's when the interviewers let the folks in on what we knew all along: These aren't teachings of the Quran.

They're Bible verses.

Everyone was visibly surprised.

The lesson, of course, is that we need to step back and look at what we're doing here.

This guy gets it:

The best part of this video is that the folks were willing to acknowledge their biases.

Nobody got defensive or angry. They realized what happened.

Information comes at us from many directions and is often framed in a way that influences our thinking. This woman sums things right up:

And so does this man. We need to step back and think it through.

Religions adapt and change with the times.

The Quran, like the Bible, is very old. Muslims don't follow every last word verbatim, just as Christians don't follow every last word in the Bible verbatim. That's ridiculous.

We need to stop applying a double standard.

If we're going to assume that radicals who commit terrorism in the name of Islam are representative of Muslims, we must do the same with radicals who commit terrorism and proclaim to be Christians.

I think we all know better — the Planned Parenthood shooter doesn't represent the great majority of Christians, nor do the San Bernardino shooters represent the great majority of Muslims.

Let's keeps our fears in check and remember that Muslims are peaceful people. They want to raise their families and enjoy their lives and have the same opportunities as anyone else. It's pretty simple.

You can watch the full video here. It's worth it to see how the biases that people probably don't even realize they have influence their thoughts: