Folks, you know I’m writing about Peter LaBarbera when I start a piece with the word “folks.” Anyway, the Day of Silence is this Friday. If you are not aware, it’s a day where students and teachers across the nation remain silent for a day to give voice to the problems gay kids face every day, such as name-calling, physical abuse, and the like. Indeed, it’s especially pertinent this year, as we’ve seen a spate of gay or gay perceived kids taking their own lives, stemming from anti-gay bullying perpetuated by classmates, teachers, pastors, and unfortunately, sometimes their own wingnut parents. It is a fact, not an opinion, that fundamentalist religious teaching on homosexuality, as well as their bizarre obsession with the subject, is related to the pain and depression some gay kids experience.
But hate group leaders Peter LaBarbera and Laurie Higgins really, really don’t want to examine their souls, at any point, because they love their dogma more than they love people. So let’s watch them encourage truancy this Friday in order that the wingnut parents who follow them might have something about which to pout. Here’s the Peter Part [you don’t need links. You know where this hateful, dishonest crap is posted on the internet]:
The suffocating political correctness on a host of controversies — including homosexuality — overwhelms the Average Mom and Dad, who are already running ragged between work, family duties, church and youth sports.
Uh, normal parents aren’t running around crying about the “political correctness” [read: actual information and education] over homosexuality. Not good parents, anyway.
(In addition, as more and more Christian parents abandon the public schools, it removes a key wholesome influence restraining evil.)
At least once a week, the words of a fundamentalist remind me of a science fiction novel, or Magic: the Gathering, or something along those lines.
So we at AFTAH echo the call for parents to pull their kids out of any school that abides the annual homosexual-activist event April 15 called the “Day of Silence.”
[…]
If you have any inkling that they are encouraging this disruptive event, tell the school that you will be keeping your child home that day. In doing so, you will send a powerful message to teachers and administrators that their embrace of pro-homosexual advocacy comes at a price.
Uh, yeah. Five or six kids with annoying parents won’t be there that day.
Okay, time for Laurence:
It is unconscionable that conservative parents remain silent, acquiescent, fearful non-participants in our public schools while homosexuals and their ideological allies engage continuously in vociferous, vigorous, and bold action.
It’s always funny to me that hate group leaders like Laurie tell themselves that the REAL problem is that wingnuts aren’t bitching loud enough. Trust me. Everybody can hear y’all.
The Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is fewer than two weeks away. GLSEN’s Day of Silence, which began on college campuses and has now infiltrated middle schools, exploits anti-bullying sentiment to undermine the belief that homosexual acts are immoral.
And that’s all it is: a belief. A stupid, uninformed belief, based on nothing. But, ya know, gay kids unfortunately make up a disproportionate percentage of bullying victims, so how dare we include them?
GLSEN shamelessly exploits teen suicide in order to create a climate of hysteria which they can then exploit to falsely impute culpability for teen suicide to conservative moral beliefs.
Uh. Well, since anti-gay sentiment comes from conservative “moral” beliefs [sic], and this actually involves kids dying and/or being scarred for life, I really don’t see how anyone is “exploiting” anything. Laurence and Porno Pete are just upset because the day is coming when their “moral” beliefs will be relegated to the scrap heap of society where they belong, alongside White Supremacy. Laurence and Peter want special rights, really. Since it’s simply not debatable by actual adults whether or not fundamentalist anti-gay hatred contributes to the problem of gay teen suicide, they are desperately trying to get an exemption that would allow them to continue to spiritually, mentally and emotionally bully gay kids.
GLSEN’s end game is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and political climate in which it is impossible to express them.
Conservative “moral” beliefs are being eradicated on their own, mostly because in the year 2011, fewer and fewer people buy into their dishonest bile about gay people. And no, nobody wants to take away wingnuts’ rights to express their beliefs [as long as they don’t directly hurt people]; I mean, the Klan still has rallies occasionally in the South. Nobody’s taking away their freedom of speech.
Their cultural vehicle of choice for this radical social experiment is public education. What a strategic coup for homosexualists: use our money to capture the hearts and minds of our children.
Oh yes, we are so crafty. We’re actually trying to protect YOUR kids, because YOUR gay kids are the ones who end up, all too often, depressed and suicidal, because of YOUR influence. Hello, “ex-gay” industry. How are you doing today? Still hurting people? Yup.
And we do virtually nothing. Our complacence makes us complicit in the damage done to our children and our culture. Moreover, we teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists.
To be fair, your kids, more and more, don’t really understand why you’re so barking upset about gay people.
Anyway, so then Laurence gives a bunch of instructions to parents, about keeping their kids home during the Day of Silence, so that their kids might escape the suffering that might befall them if they were confronted with actual education on the subject of LGBT people. The fundamentalist lifestyle really is, at heart, a loud, over-choreographed permutation of sticking one’s fingers in one’s own ears and caterwauling.
The piece ends with laundry list of grievances, about how it’s getting harder and harder for fundamentalist wingnuts to hurt gay kids and treat them like pariahs. My remarks come in italics after each whine:
•Ten states now have “enumerated” anti-bullying laws, which specifically include homosexuality and gender confusion as protected classes. Instead of allowing the anti-gay bullying to continue apace!
•Comprehensive sex ed curricula portray homosexuality as morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Prove that it is not. Oh. You can’t.
•California’s SB 48, if passed, will require schools to teach about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder positively while censoring dissenting resources. Well, discredited nonsense from wingnuts really has no place in public education anyway.
•Federal Safe Schools Improvement Act denies funding to schools to combat drugs and violence unless they agree to address homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder. Again, what Laurie wants is special rights to continue hurting gay kids while protecting the other kids.
•Federal Student Non-Discrimination Act includes homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder as protected classes. If passed, schools would be prohibited from treating the objective biological fact of a student’s sex as if it had objective status. It would render the act of making common sense distinctions between boys and girls illegal. Oh, lord. You know, Laurie, there’s biology involved in the phenomenon of “transgender,” and scientists actually understand it pretty well. Feel free to do some research and learn about it.
•“Dear Colleague” Letter, which unconstitutionally expands the control of government over student speech, was sent by the Department of Justice to all school boards. I’m getting bored writing this piece.
•The Department of Justice created a video submission to Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign in which federal employees affirm unproven moral propositions about homosexuality to students. It’s really adorable when a wingnut tries to use the word “unproven,” since NOTHING they believe is proven or provable. That being said, the fundamental complaint here is the suggestion [which is valid and provable!] that life can get better for hurting gay kids, and that it doesn’t involve spiritual abuse!
•President Obama held an anti-bullying conference at the White House to which he invited representatives from virtually every homosexuality-affirming organizations that seeks to use public education to normalize homosexuality. Instead of affirming Laurie Higgins’ special right to hurt gay kids.
•The White House created an anti-bullying website that has a special image link for only one group of students who experience bullying: LGBT students. Yep.
Seriously, I’d hate to be there on the day people like Laurie Higgins and Peter LaBarbera realize [if moral reflection is even possible for their kind] how much harm they have done to people throughout their careers.
Like any good comedienne, Laurie saves her punchline for the last paragraph:
It’s long past time that conservatives start acting and speaking as if we think our moral beliefs are objectively true.
You do. Watching it is atrocious. They’re not. And people’s lives are destroyed because of it.
Spread the word about the Day of Silence, everyone.
