Truth Wins Out expressed outrage today that a fundamentalist rock band known for preaching offensive hate messages was allowed to spew its misinformation at a Dunkerton High School assembly. While on-stage a Junkyard Prophet band member said, “Homosexuals died at the age of 42.” Bradlee Dean, a Minnesota radio talk show host who had been praised by Rep. Michele Bachmann, leads the rock band.
According to reports, “students and teachers at an Iowa high school say they were blindsided when a traveling band slammed them with anti-gay, anti-abortion and other extremist views during what was billed as an assembly about bullying.”
We are outraged that students were subjected to such a disgusting, hate-filled message that clearly violated the separation of church and state. School administrators have to do their homework to ensure they are aren’t booking extremists with sectarian agendas.
In fact, Truth Wins Out’s “Center Against Radical Extremism” warned in April 2010 that Dean boasted to a panel at the Awakening conference in Lynchburg, VA, “We’ve been to 330 schools and only two asked us to leave.” Upon hearing this, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough cheered Dean and declared, “We need more special forces like yourself,” and then spoke of the importance in engaging in “guerilla warfare.”
Superintendent Jim Stanton (pictured) responded to the community’s fury by saying that Junkyard Prophet offered “a very strong anti-violence, anti-drug, anti-alcohol” message. He added that the presenters shared “an opinion about intolerance that’s not in line with the beliefs of the Dunkerton Community Schools. We promote tolerance for one another. We will continue to celebrate diversity in our student body.”
While Stanton’s words are welcome, it is baffling that the band was reportedly allowed to perform and remain on campus for three hours, causing many students to break down in tears. Many in the community are calling on Stanton to resign, while some reports says he was already considering stepping down.
We are profoundly disgusted that Junkyard Prophet was allowed to perform, and even more disturbed that school officials did not pull out the hook and yank these fanatics off of the stage. It is crucial that schools understand that religious zealots are actively searching for ways to infiltrate classrooms to indoctrinate youth with extremist messages. It is the responsibility of school administrators to stop the attacks on students as soon as they recognize that they are occurring. In this case, the school badly failed at the expense of the students’ mental health.
Dean is also the founder of the Minnesota Christian organization You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an official hate group. Dean has called LGBT people predators and child molesters and caused a brouhaha 
when he gave the opening prayer in the Minnesota State House.
LGBT people were not the band’s only targets while at the event. Junkyard Prophet attacked Lady Gaga, Elton John, and women. Very rarely do such hate organizations stick to attacking one group or minority. They usually have a wide array of targets they dislike and aren’t shy about denigrating a number of people.
“They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” one mother of a Dunkerton High School junior, told the Lacrosse Tribune. The girls were told to assume a submissive role in their household and remain “pure” until marriage, students said. The boys said they were shown images of musicians who died of drug overdoses and images of aborted fetuses. The Tribune reported that the school district is working to get back the $1,500 fee they paid Junkyard Prophet for the school event.
It appears that the band’s assertion that gay men die at age 42 comes from the disgraced researcher Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute, who was permanently expelled from the American Psychological Association and the Nebraska Psychological Association for peddling falsehoods about LGBT people.
Bradlee Dean is a sick man!!! People should not support this nuthatch. Does anyone know if he is married or gay?
If you are interested in knowing about other ways in which fundies are creeping into the nation’s schools, consider reading “The Good News Club” by Katherine Stewart. It is an excellent & fairly quick read & it is alarming to learn what is already going on in schools which put on ‘after school activities’ which are secretly fundie.
He chocked that full of hate from every angle. Let every school administrator beware, that these hate groups LOVE to insinuate themselves into your schools and waste your assembly money, and truly pollute the kids’ minds.
Bradlee Dean made national news with his hate-filled ‘prayer’ in the MN legislature. How could a neighboring state be so oblivious to this group’s agenda??
I’m glad this school has owned up to its horrible mistake. I only hope this will raise a red flag for other schools not to give these people business. They are a part of newly-certified hate group You Can Run But You Cannot Hide (nice, threatening name, too). Check out their youtube channel, they mean business. They mean war. I wonder if their videos can be reported.
And these holy warriors want to say that gay people are the ones trying to indoctrinate kids!
Bradlee Dean is evil, he is the son of LUCIFER, that filthy maggot.
Someone should tell Mr. Dean that the only people who use the double
seriously. “Bradlee”? someone needs to point out to this ultra hetero he-man that only strippers and ten year old girls use the double ee spelling system. I bet he dots his “I’s” with little hearts or smiley faces.
Wow, Gays die at 42? I guess I and many of my friends are anomalies. I’m 60 and my partner is 65… So much for THAT hypothesis.
Hmmm I outlived the gay death age by over 8 years and still goin strong, no end in sight!! I remember some anti-gay preacher years ago spouting the cliches that gays are ‘disproportionately educated” and have lots of disposable income. I don’t know about the former, but I sure could use that disposable income so many of us gays supposedly have.
Well, at least the *Junkyard* part of their name is spot on. And maybe we’re ‘disproportionately educated’, because we’re smarter and have more ambition.
This band slithered in under the radar because school officials did not exercise due diligence (google search) before giving permission to them to perform for the student body.
The same type of thing happens when Scientology front groups are allowed to address assemblies under guise of human rights, or drug education programs.
“Superintendent Jim Stanton responded to the community’s fury by saying that Junkyard Prophet offered “a very strong anti-violence, anti-drug, anti-alcohol” message.”
I guess intolerance, homophobia and oppressing girls is okay then? Or did he somehow miss all this other awkward stuff?
I too am outraged! (that faggots are welcomed in public schools)
So, Phalluster, what’s your problem with bundles of sticks?
Rather be a faggot than a fundie any day.
Phalluster, got a moment to spare from your outrage to explain your phallocentric screen name?
Brandlee and Junkyard have an “anti-violence” message? So says the superintendent? Oh really? The man is on record calling for the “Extermination” of gay folks. Nothing says “anti-violence” than rounding up fellow citizens and “Exterminating” them. A simple google of “Bradlee Dean Kill Gays” comes up with a plethora of sites that catalog the man’s murderous fantasies.
text of my email to the superintendent, copied to the president of the board of education (Alen Nagel, rnagel50703@yahoo.com)
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I fully understand that I am not from your state or your school district. However, I am from America, and we do have children — 3 of them all told, ranging in age from 5 months to 17 years. We support public schools, because as an educator myself (in higher education for 19 years now, 11 of them with continuing appointment (tenure) ) I understand the necessity of broad-based curriculum driven education in a safe environment for all young people, and life long learning focusing on critical thinking for all adults. There is, in our increasingly technologically based world, no alternative – if we are to remain competitive in global markets and viable as the world’s sole superpower.
However, we certainly do not support what happened at your school, and I am appalled that it was allowed to occur at all, and certainly appalled that it was allowed to continue.
That a music group headed by someone who also heads an SPLC certified hate group (the gold standard, if you would, for hate groups) was ever allowed in the door to perform at any function, say much less an anti-bullying event, is beyond belief. That, once school officials were aware of their agenda, which if school officials were present at the assembly they certainly were, these extremists were not pulled from the stage and ejected from the school is incomprehensible. That, if there was any legitimate reason for the school accepting Junkyard Prophet(s) to begin with (such as deceptive presentation, or misleading promotional materials) the school is not suing on behalf of the students for damages and future medical bills is disgusting.
America has rolled over to our own extremists much as Pakistan and other primarily Muslim nations have rolled over to theirs. It is unacceptable there, but we hardly have a right to comment as a nation-state as long as the beam of appeasement is in our own eye.
You have allowed, and if you invited these vile creatures, caused harm to students in your care. You should be glad that you are not from here – because if my children were exposed to the lies of such a group, you had better believe that although I have never in my life been party to a lawsuit, I would be the day after. Children are not the property of the school. That a partisan, sectarian hate group that actually quotes Paul Cameron’s provable falsified statistics to children is allowed near them devastates the covenant that a school has with the parents of the children in it — the actual caregivers for those children.
I am not sure what remedy your school can offer, but I am sure that it should start with your resignation, and your permanent removal from secondary (or primary) education. You have disgraced all of us who are educators — please have the courtesy to feel shame, to apologize, and to leave.
Regards,
Reynolds C. Jones
Schenectady, NY
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Email used for identification purposes only. The views expressed are the views of the author and do not reflect any official position of the college or of the State University of New York