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Gay Teen’s Viral Video Prompts Support, Outrage… And A Little Update

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» 64 comments

Back in August of this year, a teen named Jonah Mowry created a video to share on YouTube. It was the summer before eighth grade, and Jonah wanted to let the classmates who had antagonized him for years know that he wasn’t going anywhere.

The video soon went viral, with (now) over five million strangers and loved ones across the world getting a little glimpse at a crucial turning point in Jonah’s life.

Four months later, he posted an update:

To all my friends and supporters,

I made this video 4 months ago just before school was about to start. I was 13. It was a very emotionally dark time in my life. I made the video at 4:00am in the morning; I hadn’t been sleeping at night for a long time, too many things going on in my head. I was dreading going back to school and I had not come out to my family yet. Only my closest friends knew. I didn’t know how to say what I needed to say. All I could think about were all the bad things that had been happening at school last year, every year for that matter. I just couldn’t bare to go through that anymore. I was done being fake happy, pretending hateful words didn’t hurt, done hiding it from my family.

So this video was made for my friends that had moved on to High School who were worried for me, to say to them that I was going to take a stand, and to the haters at my middle school that I’m not going anywhere. I am who I am. I posted the video here and told people were to find it. That was it.

My friends were moved by the video and thought I did something important. I was encouraged to upload it to my Facebook page so more people could see it. Maybe it could help someone else going through the same thing. So I linked it Dec. 1st. My Parents saw it for the first time Dec, 2nd.

Then….. all this happened.

I never expected in a million years that it would have such a wonderful impact on so many people. I am truly humbled and truly thankful for all the love, encouragement and support from people all over the world. It’s been incredibly overwhelming. I don’t know what to say. Thank you so, so much!

Lastly, yes you have seen me happy in a couple short videos replies I posted; I would think that would be a good thing, and yes I do have friends, my High School friends, and I have made friends because when I came out they realized that they had hurt me and that they fealt sorry. The video is real, and true.

In the last few months everything eventually came out in the open, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders; I’m happy, I’m excepted for who I am, I’m more confident and feel stronger every day.

Thank you all, Love and peace to all who are hurting.
Jonah Mowry

Jonah’s mother recently told ABC News that all the attention her son’s video has garnered has been something of a mixed bag, bringing it with it countless messages of support and encouragement in addition to insults and criticism, including accusations that the video is a “fake.”

In response, Jonah — appearing much more upbeat and in the company of a friend — posted a new, “update” video two days ago. You can watch it on YouTube. “Thank you for everyone who’s being nice,” he said. “And to the people who are being mean and calling me gay: Um, thank you for stating the obvious.” Oh, Jonah!

Jonah’s original video appears below:

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  • Anonymous

    Don’t worry, Jonah: you have an entire political party who also hate you. In fact, Michelle Bachmann’s husband is standing by to de-program you from your gayness. 

  • WiddleBabyDanielson

    Thanks Alex.
    Nice story.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSPIVAFYI672OH5NOKVRTEZA4U MadCharles

     If the kids gay that’s fine. If he’s happy being gay he should keep it to himself and be happy with himself. If the kid flaunts his gayness in the hallways so he can find a boyfriend he screwed up. The last kid that flaunted got his head blown off in school by a classmate. This kids classmates found out only because he pushed it on them.
    His parents should be charged with child abuse for encouraging the kid to flaunt. Nearly 80% (Hispanics, blacks, whites, greens, republicans & democrats) voted for Prop 8 in California. People don’t want any gayness thrown in their faces anymore, they never did.

  • Anonymous

    Crass.  More like there’s an entire political party to program you to hate like they do.   Most conservatives want people to be who ‘they are’, whatever the religion, orientation, race, whatever.  There’s bad apples just like in any society, but there’s only one party in America that ‘hates’, and its not Michelle Bachman’s.

  • News Of The World

    When are you coming out of the closet?

  • News Of The World

    I hope the kid finds happiness.  There’s plenty of people in this world who won’t judge him.  Just surround yourself with those people, kiddo and you’ll be fine. 

  • Anonymous

    Ladies and Gentlemen, the modern American Conservative party…

  • Anonymous

    What if a white kid, in an all black neighborhood, was getting bullied?  Would you even dare to say he was flaunting his “whiteness”?

  • Anonymous

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    That’s precious….

  • Anonymous

    So flaunting it is reason to get your head blown off? If that’s the case then every pig headed male in high school needs a bullet to the head.

    And last time I checked the Prop 8 passed 53% to 47%. In what world is that 80%?

  • Anonymous

    Ahhh, the teen years – very difficult.  I cannot imagine how hard it is for someone that is gay.  You are really just a kid still but your peers are pretty brutal at that age.

    Looks like he is strong and has the support of his parents – we need more people like him with the guts to stand up against the odds!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSPIVAFYI672OH5NOKVRTEZA4U MadCharles

    (Individual groups)
    No one said flaunting should get your head blown off but it happened. The jury couldn’t decide so the shooter plead guilty to a lesser and will be out at 18/21

  • Anonymous

    You know, there was a time when kids who got bullied went and started working out, taking boxing/karate lessons, and then showing up the next year to fight back against the bully.

    Now, every kid has to go online and whine.

    And since when did homosexuals corner the market on bullying? Is it because it fits the narrative created by Anderson Cooper and Lady Gaga?

  • Anonymous

    Psychological projection is a bitch! The thing with the cons is, the “bad apples” make up the majority of the rancid collection. 

  • Anonymous

    What is your definition of “flaunting” gayness? You homophobic wingnuts are quite insane. Do you flaunt heterosexuality? 

  • Anonymous

    Actually you did justify violence against gays and pinning the blame on them and their parents…idiot!

  • Anonymous

    Don’t think he was throwing it in anyones face. Do you have a problem with gays?

  • Anonymous

    Wow. That was the most inane thing I’ve read all day. Congratulations.

  • Joke Scareborough

    I bet he would have really loved Freshman Day back in my time.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Mwelvy Mark YCelene Welvaert

    Yes, I am a Christian, and the truth is Truth Christians don’t hate. We love… Jonah is struggling in a lost world and the only way for true happiness and joy only come from ….Jesus.  We are all sinners but he shed his life so we can live, have hope, and find True Peace.  We must individually repent and ask for forgiveness for our sins, He died on the cross in our place so we may be pure, and enter into, well just being a Christian, yes we are people who truly love people. And Yes We Care for you Jonah and pray for you! Find Piece……

  • Anonymous

    80% voted for prop 8? that is blatantly WRONG. check your facts, dude.

  • Tan

    Well how is it fair that straight people get to talk about their love interest or lust whenever they want to, but the gay people aren’t just because YOU don’t like it!? What sort of self involved narcissist are you? Why do you and I get to throw our straightness in other peoples faces while the gay people have to shut up about it and just be pleased people are ignoring them and not bashing them?

    You are a very sick person.

  • Anonymous

    His race does not require to be flaunted unless to the blind. Racism is not the closest comparison one can make with homosexuality; incest and beastiality are much easier to compare and cannot be determined from the outside.

  • Anonymous

    Never call anyone “homophobic” unless they are truly afraid of homosexuals.

  • Anonymous

    Thank god your views are dying off and soon your children and grandchildren will remember you as a bigot, filled with hate.

    Please, die off.

  • Anonymous

    Calling homosexuals equivalent to those who commit incest and bestiality makes you a homophobe.

  • Anonymous

    There;s a difference between normal as dictated by science and normal as  defined by society. There can be overlap, but, not always. Most anti-gay people call homosexuality a “lifestyle.” They don’t view it as being a natural phenomenon. That is the crux of the argument. From a scientific view, a hermaphrodite is an “abnormal” state due to genotypic anomalies but that does not mean being one is not natural.

  • Anonymous

    You sound like a typical left-wing lunatic, I hope you have learned today that a man’s race should never be compared with to one’s sexuality. It’s funny how you’re telling me about being filled with hate while I taught you a simple lesson.

    Another day we’ll talk about tolerance and left-wing activism.

  • Anonymous

    They are in the same category of abnormalcy.

    By the way it seems you do have a problem with people who practice incest and beastiality, and apparently you hold them to a lower standard than homosexuals, which I believe makes you a bigot in the real sense of the word. Inceastous people are  people too, and so are those who practice beastiality, therefore you shouldn’t discriminate against them.

    Stop being an incestophobe and a beastialophobe.

    PS: I know you might not be familiar with these terms above, perhaps you should wait for a decade or two when the incest rights and beastiality rights movement becomes prominent. Homophobe seems to be you leftie’s favorite word for name calling when you have no points to argue on. Homophobia as a word or teminology did not exist in any dictionary anywhere, until its usage began in the early seventies, and left-wing progressive activists were at their final phase of transforming homosexuality and homosexuals into a significant voting demographic.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    Today kids just bring guns to school, much faster and easier to kill bullies with a gun. Maybe someone should have addressed your bullying back in school so we don’t have to lesson to your crap now? 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    I bet you are a bully?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    Fundamentalism is the problem, you are the problem. The words between your line say it all clearly. You are as fundamentalist, go ahead, drink your cool aid and spout your nonsense……..

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    You will burn in your hate forever. Have fun with that! LOL

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    You are one sick puppy and deserve to burn in your own hate forever. No, have sex with an animal is not the same as two loving people.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    What about Jews. If they flaunt their Jewness is that like incest and bestiality?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    sooner the better, so he can be forgotten

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    You sound stupid, and no one learned anything but your sad little view. Rights are rights, heterosexuals are not the only ones deserving of them. Proud gay people will fight for their lives forever. history has shown us victory always goes to the righteous. Those fighting for their lives are motivated by much deeper things then your so called lesson and shallow ignorant. You fight for an idea, we fight for our lives. We are winning, your hate filled institutionalized discrimination is losing. We will giver our lives fighting your bigotry because it is the right thing to do.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1346572519 Jeffrey Johnson

    Are you saying the republican/tea party is for gay rights and human rights? Are you on crack? Liberals are all about live and let live, conservatives would have us bound by every crazy rule they could come up with, religious and otherwise, we would still be living like we did 100 years ago, that would be alright with republican as long as they get richer and fatter doing it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ron-Donaghe/1651118138 Ron Donaghe

    He pushed it on them when he was in second grade? Are you serious, dude? If a kid flaunts his heterosexuality, looking for a girlfriend in the hallways, nothing happens to him. So what’s the difference? And no…80% of Californians did not vote for Prop 8. From what dark place, where the sun don’t shine do you pull this sh*t? My wish for you and others like you is to spend a day experiencing what this kid experienced: just one day. I bet you couldn’t take it. Or better yet, why don’t you wear a sign on your forehead in public that says: Bully and proud of it.

  • Anonymous

    You are a dbag- bullying has been going on forever but now that a few gay have been subjected to it, we need to make it a federal case- literally.

    Where was your sanctimonius ass before ?

  • Anonymous

    Screw you- bullying has been happening forever but now that it is happening to gays, sudden;y it’s a federal case. What a  hypocrite you are!

  • Anonymous

    I’m the one who actually believes in the Constitution and its equal protection.

    You are just a sad little Christian who hates gay people.

  • Anonymous

    How old are you?

  • Holistic

    Gay fraud!

  • Anonymous

    What if? There is no what if! Try living anywhere near a Black community and you’ll find out just how racism works.

  • Anonymous

    Take that thing out of your mouth, your not making any sense.

  • Anonymous

    Super enlightened view there.  Odd how all racists are Conservative.

  • Anonymous

    Is that an implication that I am gay?

  • Joke Scareborough

    Actually no, I wasn’t a bully. I was quite the opposite. As a member of a New Jersey state champion football team, I stopped my teammates who were running wild from attacking the little ninth graders and at lunch time I sat with the smart kids who were considered “nerds” at the time instead of my teammates. I used to sit with the team,  but every day they would throw cole slaw, hot soup and whatever at the kids, so one day I just got up, took my lunch and sat at the “nerds” table and that was the end of that.

  • Anonymous

    Why do christofascist need to have their own class protections?

  • Anonymous

    Not everyone got muscles, or boxed, or fought back. People like myself, who was 6′ and 110, used our intelligence to crucify bullies. Where do you get that homosexuals cornered the market on being bullies? I think the kid using his mind and the internet to clear the path to his next level was not whining but brilliant. Why are you so hateful towards a 14 year old. 

  • Anonymous

    Take away the millions brought in from out of state and it fails. If the right wing passed a law bringing back slavery, it still would be wrong, just like Prop 8. When are the christofascist going to quit forcing their intolerant rules on everyone else. Keep your religion out of my government.

  • Anonymous

    I will tell you what people dont want; A BUNCH OF RETARDED, REPRESSED, ARCAHIC, CHRISTOFASCIST, FUNDAMENTALIST SHOVING THEIR NARROW, BACKWARDS VIEWS ON THE REST OF SOCIETY. Keep your religion out of my government.

  • Anonymous

    That smacks a lot of Nancy Pelosi Christianity.
    “My favorite word is “THE Word”

    And that WORD is “bullshit”

  • Anonymous

    He and his ilk  will have the opportunity to mock God to His face….
    Where can I get tickets?

  • Anonymous

    Take this little queer punk away from civilized folks.
    Lock him up in an adult prison where he can get what he likes and give the fudge packers a cheap thrill.
    These perverts belong on a different planet

  • Anonymous

    Never bullied anyone in my life.

  • Anonymous

    No hate. Just think that putting your personal shit out there on the net is dopey.

  • Anonymous

    Likewise you shall burn in your inferno of bigotry for assuming that the love and affection between a human and his or her animal should be discriminated, because you are in favor of human homosexuality. It makes you look silly for accusing people of being homophobes because they dont agree with your views,yet you think you are any better than siblings in love with each other, or humans in love with their animals. You are nothing less than a complete fool for thinking that there aren’t humans who love their animals more than some human friends or even family members. You need to do some studying, you beastialophobe.

  • http://www.americanrxhealth.com/south-beach-java-diet-coffee-review South Beach Java

    Jonah… I’m 38 years old, have a wife and three kids. I’m 3 mos behind on my mortgage, have been battling high blood pressure for over a year, am about 50 lbs overweight (i’ve lost 45 lbs since january), just had surgery to remove my gall bladder two weeks ago, still having a lot of abdominal pain and my doctor can’t tell me what it is, have very little money to buy Christmas gifts for my wife and kids, my mom had a car accident and i have to pay for the repairs, my wife’s car broke down and I can barely afford to get it repaired, i’m having to drop off all my kids and wife at school and work before i go to work myself… in my daughter’s tiny two-door coupe, and i’m in constant physical pain all day every day because of my surgery and pain in my rib cage that’s undiagnosed… but, yet, suicide is not an option for me, and i don’t see how cutting myself is going to help. Sometimes you just have to suck it up, roll with the punches, and spin like a top. This is all true, btw.

  • Anonymous

    Let’s talk about something more important instead, like the e-mails just released today by the DOJ today confirming that the obama DOJ was intentionally and illegally selling guns to the Mexican drug gangs with the intention of using the crimes committed with those “American weapons” to attack the second amendment. Subversion of the constitution anyone? Are there trials, convictions, perhaps executions for being accessories to murder and treason in order here? What would your opinion be if it had been a Republican admin that had done this and caused the death of U.S. agents and HUNDREDS of Mexican nationals?

  • Anonymous

    This “John Doe” is nothing but a bigoted creep, and I don’t care how many times the idiot tries to deny that he’s infected with the homophobia virus, he’s sickness proves it all out.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Angela-Horne/1621823849 Angela Horne
  • http://ntxman.myopenid.com/ Jake

    I think the kids tearing this little guy down as well as
    others being torn down are seeing a piece of them inside these kids they bully.
    After all, that is the premise behind bullying.

     

    But if all this is over religious beliefs, it’s over nothing
    and completely pointless. Which commandment states homosexuality is wrong???
    Show me. Tell me.

     

    I take it these ‘entitlements’ to bully gaysexuals stems
    from the premise behind procreation, which stems from religious messages
    screaming ‘procreate’ all they while remaining oblivious to the fact the times
    such mess was written by mortal hand and published by mortal hand was during
    times when Kings and Queens reigned throughout the world and whose overall
    wealth was determined by the amount of land amassed and those held in bondage
    (servitude).  {Part 1 of 2 given
    character limitations.)

     

    Procreating only lead to increase in slaves; conversely increase
    in war power and overall wealth for the additional land they took. (And guess
    what? Gay men – seed bearers – can’t procreate among themselves!!! So what
    benefit were they to the masses? They were of no benefit and is why they were
    discouraged in Levitcus instead.) All this information is contained in Advanced
    World History studies as well as common sense. There is absolutely nothing
    wrong in being gay; however, there is much wrong in being dishonest, with
    dishonesty stemming from the adult teachings that gayness is wrong, which
    usually is loudest from those who engage adultery (you know, constant marriages
    and divorces, etc.).

     

    So lighten up kid…and don’t hate yourself. Love you for
    being true to you.

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