A 21-year-old Indiana student and four friends were physically attacked May 9 in the latest apparent antigay hate crime to be ignored by ex-gay activists.
Last month, in a declaration that antigay violence is a non-issue, Exodus and Focus on the Family voiced opposition to a national Day of Silence which commemorates antigay violence and seeks to establish specific school policies to reduce violence and harassment. Pro-exgay pundit Warren Throckmorton sought to compete with the Day of Silence through a Golden Rule initiative, while Exodus featured speaker Ken Hutcherson organized a antigay protest purposely intended to disrupt public-school classes at a school in Washington state where the Day of Silence was being observed by some students. Exodus and Focus supported a so-called Day of Truth three days later. The DOT was a national religious-right campaign that sought to:
- oppose school programs that offer specific measures to reduce antigay violence
- vent antigay religious judgmentalism and sexual insults against gay and gay-tolerant students while they are at school trying to learn
Since the February killings of California gay student Lawrence King and Florida gay youth Simmie Williams, reports of antigay assaults and killings stretching from Tennessee to Illinois to New Jersey and elsewhere have been met by the ex-gay movement with ongoing silence and a refusal to act — except to silence survivors and hold rallies for bullies.
