upworthy

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Read the powerful, viral note this dad wrote to his makeup artist son's bully.

Internet, don't you dare mess with Manny Sr.





This is YouTuber and makeup guru Manny Gutierrez.

Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for People.

He's taking the beauty world by storm, one tweet at a time.

Maybelline just recruited Gutierrez to be the face of its new mascara campaign — the very first time the role has ever been given to a man.

From a promotional standpoint, the move was a smart one. Gutierrez has amassed millions of social media fans who follow him for his expert makeup advice and hilarious online presence.

Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Maybelline New York.

But with all the extra fanfare lately, Gutierrez, who is openly gay, has attracted some unwanted attention too.

On Jan. 6, 2017, conservative blogger Matt Walsh tweeted out a photo of Gutierrez, writing, "Dads, this is why you need to be there to raise your sons."

Dads, this is why you need to be there to raise your sons.pic.twitter.com/8ybirgppKi

Needless to say, Walsh's tweet — which racked up nearly 5,000 favorites and over 1,600 retweets — encapsulates a whole lot of bigotry and ignorance in less than 140 characters.

Walsh's rhetoric wasn't just harmful, though, it was factually incorrect too.

Gutierrez's dad, "Manny Sr.," has been there for the social media star.

In fact, he's been one of Gutierrez's biggest supporters.

After Walsh's example of fragile masculinity went viral, Manny Sr. — who works for his son and is "so proud" of him — decided to throw in his two cents. He wrote a message addressed to Walsh and asked Gutierrez to share it on his social media accounts:

My dad is a fucken SAVAGE, I can't with him pic.twitter.com/iWceEmZ6L4

"Not only am I proud of what [my son] has accomplished, but I'm more proud of the person he has become," Manny Sr. wrote.

"I know the words you speak are from lack of knowing anybody from the LGBT community," he wrote. "If you did, you would soon realize they are some of the most real and kind hearted individuals that walk this planet of ours."

Fortunately, Manny's tweet with his dad's message has spread much further than Walsh's original hateful comment, garnering more than 12,000 retweets and nearly 60,000 favorites.

Gutierrez's dad's love for his son reflects a broader shift in parents who are accepting and supportive of their LGBTQ children.

While the popularity of same-sex marriage doesn't necessarily indicate progress on all queer issues, it does serve as a general barometer to gauge Americans' evolving attitudes on LGBTQ rights. And in that sense, we've come a long way.

Not only has national approval of marriage equality trended upward in recent years — surpassing 60% in 2016 — but, more specifically, parents of a certain generation are coming around to the idea too: A 2016 WedInsights study found that 60% of married same-sex couples reported having emotional support from their parents — up from 46% in 2013.

There are many more Manny Sr.'s out there.

In response to the letter, fans applauded Gutierrez's dad.

Whether it was through an abundance of exclamation points...

...attempts to recruit Gutierrez's dad for public office...

Can we have your dad for president?!

...or sending him a simple message of love via hug.

Fans loved Manny Sr.'s message of inclusion. And that message, of course, wasn't lost on Gutierrez either.

"He's the best," Gutierrez wrote in response to one fan. "[I'm] so lucky to have him."


This article was originally published on 1.18.17


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You've probably seen this bigoted post going viral. Well, someone wrote the perfect response.

via Gage Skidmore / Flickr

There's a post that conservatives are sharing on Facebook that aims to make it seem like they are tolerant people, but they've been pushed to the point where they've decided to become a bigot.

Who pushed them too far? The LGBT community, people of color, liberals, and immigrants.

The post is clearly a total "Sorry, not sorry," post that attempts to have things both ways. It essentially says, "I was tolerant of those who aren't white, straight, and conservative, but I've become intolerant of them because they are destroying my way of life."



via Reddit

[Note: There are different versions of this post that say: "I have never cared if you were well off, or poor, because I've been both, until you started calling me names for working hard and bettering myself" and "I've never cared if you don't like guns until you tried to take my guns away."]

Who in the world is calling people names for working hard? Also, it's a little self-aggrandizing for someone to pat their own back by bragging about working hard and bettering themselves. But, hey, puffing yourself up is what Facebook is for.

Whoever shares the post is also looking to be praised for their toughness, "my patience and tolerance are gone." Congratulations on being so thin-skinned.

The post is also inadvertently funny because it says, "I never cared you were gay until you started shoving it down my throat." Now, what exactly was shoved down this person's throat and did they enjoy it or not? That reveal would make for a much more entertaining post.

So, what happened now grandpa?

The post also assumes that the LGBT community, people of color, liberals, and immigrants are all fighting against straight, white conservatives in an attempt to ruin their lives. When, in reality, most of the activists are simply fighting for equality.

There are extremists in all movements, so to paint each group with such broad-strokes shows a real lack of experience.

via Netflix


via Netflix

LGBT people aren't trying to turn straight people into drag queens. Protesting against systemic inequality isn't about blaming others people for your problems, it's about highlighting inequity and attempting to correct it.

And where does the original poster get the idea that immigrants are trying to erase anyone's history?

Someone came up with the perfect response to the "I don't care" post by pointing out the fact that the person who wrote the manifesto probably has supported Republican policies that have oppressed immigrants, people of color, and the LGBT community.

Naturally, these policies have encouraged liberals to fight back.

via Reddit

The poster does a great job of explaining how the person who "never cared" really does care about the rights of people who aren't like him or her.

People on the right love to talk about freedom, but it's more like, "freedom for me but not for thee." They are vocal about the freedom to own a gun, run a business without interference, and pay less in taxes to the state.

But they conveniently neglect the freedom for people to love who they choose, live where they want, and do what they wish with their bodies.

People who truly value liberty want it for those they disagree with as well.

In today's politically divided America, tolerance is a value that we need a lot more and more of, regardless of one's political affiliation. So, how about an "I never cared" post that goes something like this?

"You know folks, I never cared you were gay until I saw that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide, compared to heterosexual youth. So I stood up for your rights.

I never cared what color you were until I learned that Black people are up to six times more likely to be killed by police, so I marched alongside you.

I never cared about your political affiliation, until I realized it is a reflection of your values, so I listened. I also appreciated it when you listened to me when I shared my views.

I didn't care where you were from until I learned you were a refugee that came to America to provide your family with safety and opportunity.

I am not alone in feeling like this, there are millions more of us who feel like this, and we are going to change the world so it's a more tolerant, safe, and free place for all of us."

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A boy was told to give the nazi salute in class. When others followed suit, this girl spoke up.

Last week, an 11-year-old girl was reprimanded and sent to the principal's office for telling several classmates to stop giving the nazi salute.

Yes, you read that right.

As part of an interactive fifth grade social studies class project at the McFadden School of Excellence in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, one student was assigned to portray Adolf Hitler, and according to Huffington Post, his teacher instructed him to give the Sieg Heil salute as part of his presentation.

The girl, whose father later shared the whole story, including back and forth between him and the school administration in a Twitter thread, noted that while she'd initially been given the opportunity to express why the situation upset her, afterwards she was told “not address it again.”

However, because fifth graders can be mean, several students who saw how upset the salute made the girl decided to perform it at her repeatedly.

Keith Jack Gamble, the girl's father, noted that the saluting continued for weeks until some 10 to 20 students were doing it. This finally culminated in Gamble’s daughter shouting “stop it” and “put your hands down" at her classmates, which led to disciplinary action taken against her for being “disrespectful with her tone and body language to teachers.” She was then sent to the principal's office.

While the school claims teachers intervened at the few confirmed instances of harassment and the principal said he gave the entire fifth-grade class a talking to, the school is taking no responsibility for the inciting assignment.

“It was never intended to be offensive and the salute was definitely not encouraged to be performed by the other students,” the school's communications director told HuffPost.

What was intended is hardly the point though. Fifth grade-aged children are incredibly impressionable, and by teaching them to use hateful gestures like that you're opening up a dangerous can of worms. What's perhaps even more troubling though is that the assigning teacher didn't seem to consider that the assignment might be offensive to other students in class in the first place.

The school has since agreed to stop including the nazi salute in history presentations, but many believe the damage has already been done.

This is hardly the first time the nazi salute has appeared in schools in America.

Most recently, a group of High School students in Wisconsin performed it in a group photo as a gag, even though it was distressing to a few students.

Hateful actions, even if they're not necessarily intended to be, are sadly contagious and educators have a responsibility to quell them rather than put them in their curriculum. This is especially important during this highly politically-charged time in America when racism and bigotry have been elevated by a number of divisive groups.

This hate can end with our children as long as we protect them from it as much as we can.

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A major university in the South just removed its Confederate statues overnight.

Bravo, Texas.

The University of Texas at Austin quietly removed four campus statues honoring the Confederacy on Aug. 21, 2017.

Monuments of generals Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, as well as Confederate politician John Reagan and Texas' 20th governor, Stephen Hogg, were hauled off campus overnight, just 10 days before fall classes start, The New York Times reported.

Preserving history is important, university president Greg Fenves said in a statement, but the symbolism behind those statues "run counter to the university’s core values."

"We do not choose our history," Fenves said. "But we choose what we honor and celebrate on our campus."

The university's swift decision comes amid a growing movement to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces.

Last week in Tampa, Florida, donations poured in to move a Confederate monument from the city's downtown area. Organizers had 30 days to raise adequate funding to get the job done — they raised it in 24 hours.

The day before that, news broke that Baltimore removed all four of its Confederate monuments in a span of hours. The University of Texas followed in the city's footsteps, taking action in the dead of night.

[rebelmouse-image 19528495 dam="1" original_size="750x872" caption="Workers place statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on trucks in Baltimore. Photo by Alec MacGillis/AFP/Getty Images." expand=1]Workers place statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on trucks in Baltimore. Photo by Alec MacGillis/AFP/Getty Images.

The push to remove Confederate monuments follows the deadly protest by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in reaction to the city's decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. A believed far-right terrorist allegedly murdered counter-protester Heather Heyer with his car, injuring at least 19 others in the attack. Those events pushed the University of Texas to act.

In his statement, Fenves touched on a vital point about many Confederate monuments that often gets glossed over in the debate surrounding their relevance in today's society: Those statues aren't so much about honoring history as they are about upholding racism.

“Erected during the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation, the statues [at UT-Austin] represent the subjugation of African Americans," Fenves explained. "That remains true today for white supremacists who use them to symbolize hatred and bigotry.”

Most Confederate statues, like the ones in Austin, were constructed with less than admirable intentions several decades after the Civil War.

The Civil War ended in 1865, yet the bulk of Confederate monuments were erected between 1890 and 1940, according to a the Southern Poverty Law Center. Another surge in statue construction occurred during the civil rights era of the 1960s.

A worker measures the Jefferson Davis monument in New Orleans ahead of its removal in May 2017. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Most of the new monuments coincided with "the height of Jim Crow, of state-sanctioned segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching," Purdue University history professor Caroline Janney explained to Business Insider. Their construction wasn't so much to preserve history as it was to assert white supremacy in prominent public spaces.

"The fact that they were placed on the grounds of county and state courthouses was intentional," Karen L. Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, told the Tampa Bay Times. "The message: white men are in charge."

To be clear, there absolutely should be a place for learning about the Civil War and Confederate leaders.

But it should probably be in classrooms and libraries — not via monuments that idolize the men who fought to uphold slavery.

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