Here at Truth Wins Out, the epidemic of LGBT teen suicides in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district has been on our radar for a longtime.
Nonetheless, you need to head over to Rolling Stone and read this article about what LGBT kids go through in Michele Bachmann’s district every day, largely because local evangelicals have waged an all-out war on the area’s LGBT population. This blatant bigotry only serves to intensify the bullying that’s par for the course for LGBT teenagers at schools across the country. In Anoka, homosexuality is forbidden from even being discussed. Teachers and administrators do not intervene when LGBT students are harassed by their peers because they fear being fired for violating a district policy requiring them to stay “neutral” on, and banning positive references to, LGBT people and issues. And the culture of shame and fear that “Christian” fundamentalists (many of them from the same conservative church that Bachmann attended until just last year) have created around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities is so pervasive that LGBT teens feel scared and unsafe within the walls of their schools.
And they’re killing themselves because of it. So many, in fact, that the state of Minnesota declared the Anoka-Hennepin school district a “suicide contagion area.” After one of the suicides — that of Sam Johnson in 2009 — students in the district’s GSAs participated in the Day of Silence. In this GLSEN-sponsored event, participants spent the day in silence to illustrate the silencing effect of the anti-LGBT bullying that led to the loss of several of their peers. The response? Local evangelical churches organized a so-called “Day of Truth” event; their kids showed up at school wearing shirts telling their peers they could pray away the gay and engaged in anti-gay proselytizing in the hallways. (At that time the “Day of Truth” events were sponsored by Exodus International; it’s now been shifted to Focus on the Family and re-branded as a so-called “Day of Dialogue” in a transparent attempt to soft-pedal anti-gay bigotry.)
The way local evangelical “Christians” have doubled down on– not merely shown coldhearted indifference to, but doubled down on — the persecution of LGBT people, even in the wake of so many suicides, is pure evil.
Read, too, about Tammy Aaberg. Her son Justin was an Anoka High School student who committed suicide in 2010 due to anti-LGBT bullying, and his death turned her into an activist. Readers who know me know I have a soft spot in my heart for equality moms (including, I’m proud to say, my own). Hell hath no fury like a mom fighting for her LGBT child. But I have nothing short of awe for moms like Tammy Aaberg and Judy Shepard who fight for a child whom they’ve lost. I don’t know how they do it, but I admire their strength.
This is why the fight for our equality is so important. Slowly but surely, we’re building a world where no more Judy Shepards have to bury a child murdered for being gay, where no more Tammy Aabergs have to discover their baby boy dead in his bedroom because he couldn’t take another day of being bullied for his LGBT identity.
It seems that Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham are at least trying to get messages out to counter the bile spewed forth by Tony Perkins last week in their “On Faith” column. First there was Sirdeaner Walker, mother of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, the eleven year-old who took his life after being driven to the edge by anti-gay bullying. Walker is now on the board of GLSEN, whose noble work Tony Perkins spit on in his WaPo column.
Across the country, parents, school officials, legislators, religious leaders, and others are recognizing that young people are deeply harmed by the message that being gay is sinful and wrong. For the first time, many voices are calling for accountability from groups and public figures who misuse religion to justify anti-gay bigotry.
Not surprisingly, those who have made careers of promoting anti-gay views are fighting back. Last week, Tony Perkins, the director of the Family Research Council, attacked those who “lay blame at the feet of conservative Christians who teach that homosexual conduct is wrong.” In an guest voices column for On Faith, Perkins cynically denied any connection between the harassment of gay youth and the belief that gay people are sinful and disordered. According to Perkins, all responsibility must be placed on the bully, and not on religious teachings that condemn homosexuality as a threat to society. Incredibly, Perkins claimed that if gay youth commit suicide, it is because they “recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal,” not because of rejection by family, friends, and religious leaders.
Perkin’s distortion of scientific research and callous disregard for the harm caused by his anti-gay views have been widely condemned, and rightly so.
Gold goes on to point out, though, that aside from religious leaders like Perkins himself, many of the people who hold similar views are essentially good-hearted people who don’t actually wish harm on people, and who, when confronted with the harm that such beliefs and teachings cause, are often surprised and dismayed to learn the true results of that worldview:
During my visits with people of faith in all parts of the country, I have spoken with Evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants and Jews who have been taught that homosexuality is immoral and wrong. Almost invariably, they are surprised and concerned when they hear about the harms caused by those teachings. Many have told me they had not fully considered the impact on a gay young person of being told that he is sinful and abnormal, or that he will be cut off from God’s love unless he can do the impossible and change who he is.
It’s incumbent upon religious leaders like Tony Perkins to stop cynically lying to their people about the reality of LGBT people. For whatever reason, good people around the country actually respect Perkins, Focus on the Family, and similar groups and leaders. What I’ve found over the years is similar to what Gold states in his piece — many people of the conservative persuasion simply don’t know how awful and dishonest their leaders really are.
An editorial in today’s LA Times pushes back against the absurd mental contortions of Tony Perkins and his cohorts as they seek to pretend they care about all students, while opposing the very programs meant to address bullying in our schools:
As The Times recently observed, harassment of gay and lesbian students is part of a larger problem, and therefore, schools should pursue comprehensive anti-bullying efforts. That doesn’t mean teachers and administrators shouldn’t recognize anti-gay bullying as a distinct issue rooted not only in adolescent cruelty but in cultural condemnations of homosexuality. When they do so, however, they are accused by some conservatives of taking sides in a culture war.
An extreme example was a recent article by Tony Perkins president of the Family Research Council. Perkins accused the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and similar organizations of exploiting the suicides of gay teenagers “to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family.” For good measure, he said, “the homosexual movement, and their allies in the media and the educational establishment,” may be creating despair that can lead to suicide by telling homosexuals that they are “‘born gay’ and can never change.”
Perkins’ characterization of GLSEN is unfair to the point of absurdity. But it is true that many of those who decry the bullying of gay and lesbian students also believe that schools should accept and affirm their identity, and treat homophobia with the same opprobrium with which they view racism. These advocates also believe, rightly, that schools shouldn’t endorse the theory that gays and lesbians can be converted to heterosexuality, a notion dismissed by psychiatrists and psychologists.
Precisely. When the Religious Right talks about the Evil Homosexual Activists trying to push our “agenda,” one must always remember that at least 80% of what they say is code-speak. When they discuss a “homosexual agenda,” what they’re really saying is that we should ignore all of the scientific data, all of the real world consequences, and instead push programs which conform to the Religious Right’s disproven ideological worldview. The “agenda” here is a healthy respect for reality and a desire to protect ALL children from bullying in school. The fact that this involves truths which are inconvenient to Tony Perkins ‘n’ Pals should not be treated as a problem for anyone but Tony Perkins.
A lot of LGBT writers, including this one, were understandably annoyed that the Washington Post, Sally Quinn, and Jon Meacham decided to give Tony Perkins space in their “On Faith” column to spread his hateful lies about gay kids, on National Coming Out Day no less.
Maybe this was the plan all along, but they have redeemed themselves somewhat by publishing a piece in the same space from Sirdeaner Walker, whose 11 year-old son, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, took his own life after experiencing anti-gay bullying in school. Walker is now on the board of GLSEN, a group at which Tony Perkins aimed a lot of the fire in his disgusting column. Looking at the pieces together, it’s brought into clear focus that when Perkins and his comrades hurl their bigotry at the gay community, they’re specifically aiming at the deceased kids and their families.
It’s a great piece, particularly because Walker addresses Tony Perkins and his column by name:
I came to know about an organization called GLSEN–the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network–about a year and a half ago in the midst of the most difficult time of my life. My 11-year-old son Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover had just taken his life after enduring anti-gay bullying in school. His school had not taken the bullying seriously enough. Eliza Byard, GLSEN’s executive director, offered her support.
I am a single mother and a devout Christian who had never been involved in advocacy work or politics. After my son died, and GLSEN reached out to me, some of my friends and family members expressed concern about the organization’s work to address anti-gay bullying in school. They voiced religious opposition to GLSEN. Thanks to Tony Perkins’ On Faith piece published yesterday, I don’t have to repeat the arguments. Perkins’ lays them all out practically word for word.
And they’re all wrong.
Mr. Perkins’ tactic, and that of others like him, is to use faith and religion to divide us. They seek to thwart efforts to deal with a problem at the heart of this current crisis–anti-gay bullying and harassment.
But Perkins goes further–his “facts” are taken out of context and are, frankly, untrue.
You really have to marvel at these soulless people. After a month where the bloody toll of anti-gay teachings and indoctrination has truly come into clear focus, you’d think they’d be taking a look in the mirror.
But hell, no. These are not normal, decent people.
Candi Cushman of Focus on the Family would like to minimize the gay children’s pain and and especially, their suicides, by saying that GLSEN’s survey showing that 9 out of 10 LGBT teens have been bullied is a suspect number, because it was compiled by the fags at GLSEN:
According to a recent survey by a pro-homosexual organization, nine out of ten LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) students said they experienced some form of harassment at school. But one education analyst is questioning the report’s credibility.
Candi Cushman, education analyst with Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, says the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) survey lacks objectivity.
“All of the data and the way it was interpreted was done by their own in-house activists,” Cushman points out. “The report lists four authors — all of whom are employed by GLSEN and who have been involved with GLSEN for many years, in many cases as volunteers in GLSEN’s local chapters.” The analyst describes the group as “hardly what you’d call an objective research team.”
[...]
Cushman believes GLSEN is using the survey to push its radical homosexual agenda in the public schools as it is working to incorporate homosexual and transgender themes throughout curricula in unrelated classes like math and English. “It can be read as a reliable road map of homosexual advocacy groups’ political plans for the nation’s public schools,” she writes.
Oh, Candi with an ‘i.’ Really. Dead kids. It’s time to shut up, really.
But you won’t, because morality, empathy and reality are non-entities on the Religious Right.
Last year, 85 percent of gay and transgender students in middle and high school experienced harassment at school, according to a survey released Tuesday morning by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
GLSEN surveyed 7,621 LGBT students, including some in Utah.
Nearly a third of those surveyed reported they had skipped class at least once because they felt unsafe at school.
[...]
“It could not be clearer that there is an urgent need for action to create safe and affirming schools for LGBT students,” GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard said in a statement. “As our nation seems to finally be taking bullying more seriously, it is crucial that LGBT students are no longer left out of efforts to address this public health crisis.”
Then again, Focus on the Family doesn’t care about kids in the slightest. They care about whether or not they are able to brainwash kids into buying into their discredited, disproven worldview, so that a new generation of bigots will take their place. There’s a difference.
In a rant about President Obama, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh sarcastically said he wanted to thank the president for “appointing a pervert to serve as the safe schools czar.”
Limbaugh was referring to former GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings. Oddly, this was part of a fiery monologue on how the right wing was not extreme. Thanks for proving the point of your critics, Mr. Limbaugh.
Instead of engaging in true conversation through schools’ Gay-Straight Alliances or the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s annual Day of Silence, Exodus continues to con its youth groups into a phony, egocentric conversation amongst themselves.
Exodus’ DOT website now hosts two new videos featuring what it calls “man on the street” interviews at an unidentified school:
The interviewees are reasonably diverse, but ignorant of antigay violence and bullying — and kept ignorant by Exodus. Besides sidestepping the focus of the Day of Silence, the videos also perpetuate Exodus International’s relativist habit of encouraging people to define reality to be whatever they want it to be — not what medical, statistical, and psychiatric facts dictate.
Besides fact-deficient videos, the DOT offers:
a “survey” in which antigay youths and faculty are encouraged to invent their own reality.
a “supplies” store where people can buy posters, shirts, and cards that, again, are free of any troubling doses of factual reality.
Until Exodus supports and interacts with existing channels such as GSAs and GLSEN, its DOT must be regarded as a campaign to deliberately suppress public awareness of antigay violence, to sidestep real conversation, and to insulate self-identified “Christians” from reality.
Peter LaBarbera and Linda Harvey are on their neverending Warren Throckmorton witchhunt again. It must be one of the most painful things in the world to be the Last Bigots Standing, but Pete and Linda bring it upon themselves, so no pity! Hold your nose, we’re going to have Linda time now:
A broad coalition of pro-family groups recommends that parents keep their children home on the deceptive, pro-homosexual “Day of Silence,” to be observed this year on April 16, 2010, but one “gay”-affirming counselor started what he calls the “Golden Rule Pledge” instead.
Yet, the “Golden Rule Pledge” actually functions as a disinformation tool and a divisive wedge in schools and among Christians. It is insidiously misleading and would bring harm to kids. It grieves me to take this position, but there’ no choice, because lives are at stake.
That’s right, Linda. Lives ARE at stake! Gay kids attempt and commit suicide at a much higher rate than the rest of the population because of the pig ignorant bile you leave everywhere.
[Warren Throckmorton] has expressed his preference for students remaining in school on the “Day of Silence” and hearing pro-homosexual propaganda, and learning to sympathize with those practicing these behaviors, rather than taking an unequivocal, biblical stand against these harmful practices by remaining home.
Refer to post title.
Throckmorton doesn’t even like the Exodus-sponsored “Day of Truth,” which encourages kids to remain in school and have a frank conversation, in love, with friends while presenting the biblical view of homosexuality. Throckmorton calls this “offensive.”
Well, why would he like the “Day of Truth,” since the people who sponsor it value actual, verifiable truth like pedophiles value children?
Throckmorton’ support of the “Day of Silence” will do incalculable harm to many young people. Misleading professionals like Throckmorton in positions of influence can make our sons and daughters become comfortable with entering into, staying in, or approving of homosexuality, bisexuality and gender change.
Wrong! Again, we deal with actual truth, not “I hide my bigotry behind Bible verses I don’t understand” truth. Helping make our sons and daughters comfortable with their biology, their sexual orientation, and helping them along the path of healthy development is a GOOD thing. And guess what? I can point to tons of high school kids who are living this reality right now. Meanwhile, Linda continues to have nothing more than some bur in her nether regions that she inexplicably blames on gay people.
If I were a parent who discovered my minor child had been counseled in this way, I’d bring the largest and most aggressive medical malpractice suit I could launch against this counselor at Grove City.
Well, to be fair, no one accused you of being a good mother, Linda.
Jesus would never make a person feel more comfortable about:
Young males having sex with males, the incidence of which rose over 12 % per year between 2001 and 2006 among males ages 13 to 24 1;
Young “lesbians” choosing a fatherless life for any future children, since they can never conceive children with female partners;
Hoping in such relationships for a false “marriage” in violation of Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9, where Christ told us that “from the beginning” people were created male and female, and that one man and one woman form a marriage;
Teens and even younger children believing they should change genders. As with homosexuality, we should be doing everything possible to counsel these kids and prevent these behaviors among youth.
I could swear up and down that because Curious George doesn’t refer to the Man in the Yellow Hat owning any other color hats, that’s because other colors are evil, and I could swear up and down that Curious George was written by a supreme deity, but I’d still be a malevolent bigot, hiding behind a book.
And yes, it’s the same. For that matter, you don’t know what Jesus would say, because he ain’t here, and he didn’t see fit to discuss these subjects. Although there’s a strong case to be made that he was confronted with men he knew to be in a sexual relationship with each other, and didn’t have a word to say about it. AND, there were gender variant people all over the Bible, and Jesus didn’t seem to have an issue with that either. AND, since medical science is indeed figuring out that people are born with brains that are gendered in a way that doesn’t match their physical gender, AND since medical science should theoretically be considered by Christians to be the study of God’s wondrous creation, Christians should be the first to get on board with its findings.
Game, set, match, crazy cat lady.*
As the piece continues, Linda takes issue with the Golden Rule itself:
Hmmm. “…The way I want to be treated.” So, if a student is about to enter, or has entered, a high-risk practice that is called an abomination by our Lord, and has shared this with classmates, a “true” Christian should attend school to support a day that affirms this behavior and scorns any warnings to that student? Some friendship!
Here’ a biblically-based alternative: “Friends don’t let friends do homosexuality!”
Uh, actually, Linda, since you have no proof for anything you say (not the high-risk part, not the abomination part), actually you’re just a malevolent woman who feels she has a right to impose her backwards worldview on innocent children. Perhaps the admonition should be “Friends don’t leave their children with lying Fundamentalists.”
I wouldn’t leave my kids with a deranged imam, and I certainly wouldn’t leave them with Linda Harvey.
No, the “Day of Silence” is about propaganda. The goal is to shame and label Christians and tradition-minded students and teachers, silence their authentic witness, and even silence any public health warnings. Real safety would be to scream from the rooftops about the harm homosexuality or gender change will bring to these young lives. And since no one is born homosexual, these desires are demonstrably changeable, so no one is left without a positive alternative.
My god, these people never show their work. Show me how monogamous sex between two same gendered individuals is harmful, please? Show me how safer-sex practices work for straight people, but not for gay people? And then show me how transgender people expressing their appropriate gender in whatever way they choose is harmful. And then show me your proof that people aren’t born gay. (And don’t give me that unscientific crap about how no “gay gene” has been found yet. A first year student of genetics, even from a Christian school, could explain how stupid that argument is.) And then show me all the people who have “demonstrably changed” their sexual orientation. I mean, even John Smid is now admitting that he’s still into dudes. They all do, eventually.
This is such a travesty that if we were all ancient Israelites, we’d be rending our clothing and putting on sackcloth and ashes!
Really, she just said that. But since Linda’s not an ancient Israelite, she’s going to stick with the frumpy separates and wild and crazy pink headband she got at TJ-Maxx last week.
Please join me in praying for Warren Throckmorton, for his repentance, and also for his duplicitous dealings to be revealed so no further harm is done to our precious and impressionable kids.
And please help me pray that the emotionally manipulative “Day of Silence” is revealed for what it is ‚Äî adults exploiting precious kids.
Uh, no thanks. We’ll stick with the reality-based world that Warren is becoming more of a part of every single day.
*No, I do not have any personal knowledge of how many cats Linda Harvey has. My educated guess is “47.”
I wrote the other day about Alan Chambers’ bizarre talk at the Liberty University G-H8 summit. In case that left you wanting more, here’s Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel* speaking for almost ten minutes about how, if Fundamentalists have to abide by the law in our secular society, it’s somehow a violation of their freedom of religion. Uh huh. Just to clear things up: religious freedom doesn’t include the right to lord your beliefs over other peoples’ lives. Note that every complaint Rena has about non-discrimination laws involves conservative Christians feeling the need to use their religious beliefs as a club to hurt other people. THAT is the freedom our opponents fight for. They’re not fighting for the right to believe and worship as they please. They have that, and they’ll always have that, because no one has ever threatened to take it away!
No, these people are simply children who refuse to learn to play well with others, and if I was their preschool teacher, I’d have a really hard time passing them.
Anyway, Rena goes over the Religious Right’s Greatest Hits:
1. Catholic Charities wouldn’t abide by the law in Massachusetts, so they cried victim when they freely chose to close their doors, thereby throwing children under the bus.
2. The photographer in New Mexico who broke the laws of the state of New Mexico when she refused to photograph a same-sex wedding. Was she a photographer working in a religious institution? Oh hell, of course not! She just thought she should be able to deny her services to any groups/people she doesn’t like, much in the way restaurants denied service to African Americans before the law compelled them to do differently.
3. The couple running the bed and breakfast in Vermont who opened their space for weddings and parties, oh, except that one time when (!!!) a homosexshul couple wanted to have their wedding reception there, so they said no, and used their religious bigotry as an excuse to deny that service.
4. The YMCA had to allow gay couples to have family memberships! OH NO! The sky is falling, and it’s like lions are personally eating Rena Lindevaldsen’s flesh!
What tedious whiners!
Anyway, here’s the video, if you want to watch it. She moans and groans about transgender people, GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, PFOX and some other bullroar. But again, notice that NONE of the so-called “religious discrimination” she whines about involves their actual religious freedom. It’s ALL about religious people being denied the right to their own self-appointed moral pedestal over the rest of the population.
Here at Truth Wins Out, the epidemic of LGBT teen suicides in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district has been on our radar for a long time.
In a rant about President Obama, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh sarcastically said he wanted to thank the president for “appointing a pervert to serve as the safe schools czar.” 
