Today, I ran across a small story about homophobic vandalism over at Pam’s. One thing ran across my mind as I looked at the photographs of the obscenities someone chose to paint on the bus in question. I’m amazed at just how juvenile the whole thing is. I find myself wondering if the “vandals” are any older than schoolyard boys I hung out with back in fifth grade. Quite frankly, these obscenities sound like the kinds of things my early classmates would’ve blurted out to show how “cool” and “knowledgeable” they were.

To be honest, I find myself hoping that the vandals in this incident were a bunch of fifth graders. Because the only other possibility — that they were a small gang of adults who think and behave like fifth graders — is just too disturbing for words. I’ve met some immature people in my life, but that would just beat all.

Of course, this whole incident also got me thinking back to the recent circus over Ann Coulter’s questionable remark about John Edwards. To me, this is another clear case of someone acting juvenile. In fact, I can almost hear those same schoolyard boys chuckling over the fact that using a word like “faggot” to describe someone is humorously insulting. I find myself wondering if there are any homophobes that somehow managed to develop emotionally past the onset of puberty.

To be honest, it’s hard to take such people seriously. It’s difficult to look at them as anything other than schoolyard children (and the worst kind of schoolyard children at that) who have not managed to grow up despite having grown older. And as I consider that, I realize that I actually pity them.