“True Tolerance,” a campaign of Focus on the Family that enjoys promotional support from Exodus International, may be having an impact upon public schools:
As many as 107 Tennessee public school districts recently began blocking student access to gay health, science, family, and education resources. Instead, students who seek accurate information are being confined to ex-gay resources that have been rejected as inaccurate and harmful by professional medical and mental-health organizations.
Banned resources include:
- Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
- The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
- Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
- Marriage Equality USA
- Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry
- The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
- Dignity USA (an organization for LGBT Catholics)
“True Tolerance” is an antigay response to the Day of Silence, GLSEN’s national campaign to discourage violence in public schools. The antigay project espouses tolerance of outspoken on-campus activism by antigay Christians — and intolerance of those who oppose antigay violence or who disagree with discredited ex-gay propaganda. Without offering evidence, “True Tolerance” accuses antiviolence advocates of waging a “monopoly” and a “pro-gay agenda.”
The campaign does not claim responsibility for Internet restrictions in Tennessee specifically, but the web site encourages antigay activists to pressure schools to silence the allegedly “unbalanced” messages of the antiviolence crowd and to silence “vulnerable children” (teen-agers) who seek to be honest about their sexuality.
If pressure tactics don’t work, then True Tolerance lobs legal threats against antiviolence efforts. First, the campaign warns against schools’ fears of “legal liability for not making their school ‘safe.’” True Tolerance dismisses the simple fact that antigay violence is making schools unsafe, and that parents of bullied youths are suing. Instead, True Tolerance offers to arm antigay activists with unspecified “legally accurate facts” in opposition to mandatory “diversity” policies. It would seem that, in the view of Exodus and Focus, “true tolerance” in schools cannot and should not be diverse enough to include bullied youths, their friends, or their parents.
Official efforts to “protect” mature students from the facts about gay health, science, family issues, and education are having a negative impact on Tennessee schools.
Karyn Storts-Brinks, a librarian at Fulton High School in Knoxville, points out:
Students who need to do research for assignments on current events can only get one viewpoint, keeping them from being able to cover both sides of the issue. That’ not fair and can hinder their schoolwork.
Box Turtle Bulletin reports:
The ACLU is giving the districts until April 29 to come up with a plan to provide access to LGBT sites or any other category that blocks non-sexual websites advocating the fair treatment of LGBT people by the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.
Really, it’s called “True Tolerance”? Reminds me of a bit in the back of Jon Stewart’s “America: The Book” which explains that the more happy adjectives there are in a country’s name (such as, “Democratic People’s Republic of”), the more of a human rights disaster it probably is there.
Perhaps they’ve learnt from Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), who wrote in his notorious “Hallowe’en Letter” that the Church’ line on homosexuality “does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.”
Hilarious. They perpetuate the notion that “true tolerance” means we tolerate anything from them, and they (as usual) concede nothing. We continue to suffer and die and they pretend they’re being upright and moral while conducting all of the hate-crimes.
Searches for these sites should be done at home with instruction/assistance from an adult!Tolerance should extend to EVERYONE yet it seems us “right wing extremist” (as you call us) are not tolerant while the TWO folks are! NO ONE in your group was/is tolerant of Ms. California. Let’s practice what we preach! She has a right to her opinion in public, private, etc. without being called a b…. or being treated as your founder treated her on Oreilley. So according to his standards, if one of you applied for a job with my company that I own and he said he was for same sex marriages and I disagreed with him then I have a right to deny him the job as he would be representing my company and all it’s employees and what I believe in is contrary to his beliefs and I would not want him representing my company! I could do this without be discriminatory!!! So happy to learn this!
Sam