I’m usually the snarky one who’s not fazed by wingnut nonsense, but this is disgusting:
If you’re a high school in Mississippi and you really don’t want your students bringing same-sex dates to the prom, what are you to do?
Well, you could try to ban them from coming to the prom, although that’s illegal. Or, if you’re the Itawamba Agricultural High School, you can cancel the prom altogether and punish everyone. That’s right. No gay couples. No straight couples. No prom.
Isn’t it amazing the depths folks will go in order to continue homophobic policies? That this school wanted to stop a lesbian student from bringing a same-sex date to the prom was outrageous enough. But to cancel the entire prom just to take aim at this student is punishing every single person in the school. So much for school’s acting in the best interests of their students.
The school is called Itawamba Agricultural High School. So I have two questions for the Itawamba County School Board:
1. Exactly how many self-loathing closet cases are on your board? Because this is extreme, even for Mississippi.
2. What’s wrong, Mississippi? Were you worried that Virginia was out-wingnutting you this week, and you had to do something grotesque to prove that you’re the dumbest, most unreconstructed bigots in the Union?
Later in the above quoted piece, we hear from the lesbian student:
The student at the heart of this case is a senior named Constance McMillen. Reached by the Clarion Ledger, McMillen said she was absolutely disgusted that her school would try to punish her by canceling the prom for everyone.
“Oh, my God. That’s really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one,” she said. “A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation.”
Oh, but we’re supposed to believe that the Wingnut Right really cares about bullying of LGBT students? No, as Timothy Kincaid pointed out last year, some of their leading “pro-family” voices indeed view bullying LGBT students as a Christian duty.
They are the true sick people. Not happy, healthy LGBT people. We’re fine.
When Family Research Council spokesman Peter Sprigg told MSNBC on Tuesday that LGBT people should be thrown in prison for their alleged private behavior, it escaped the attention of the news media that Sprigg is also a board member and spokesman for an FRC offshoot called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, which distributes antigay propaganda in public schools.
Sprigg is also one of the few local citizens to serve on a citizens’ advisory board for Montgomery County Public Schools in Washington, D.C.’s Maryland suburbs.
Just two days after Sprigg proudly declared that LGBT people of all ages should be imprisoned, the school district sent students home with PFOX brochures. The brochures tell students that if they are same-sex attracted, it is OK to be of two minds, to conceal one’s attractions from friends and family, to be dishonest, and proclaim one’s so-called heterosexuality. And while PFOX opposes any right to self-determination for persons who wish to be honest about their orientation, it doesn’t acknowledge this in the brochures; instead, PFOX portrays students who seek to be sexually honest and free from bullying as if they are oppressing those students wish to hide in shame and to bully or imprison others.
Neither the literature nor the school district tell students any of the following truths: (Read More)
In an article at ChristianExaminer.com, ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan asserts that one cannot be gay, monogamous, and Christian; repeats his unproven claim to have volunteered for the Human Rights Campaign; and projects his own past “shallow, lust-filled and immature” lifestyle onto all sexually honest persons living today.
Quinlan says these things during a visit to San Diego for the National Education Association’s convention on behalf of the antigay parents’ group P-FOX and its “Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus.” He also consults for the New Jersey Family Policy Council, an affiliate of Focus on the Family. (P-FOX recently gave up its affiliation with Exodus International.)
Quinlan is pushing for access to teachers in an effort to oppose the union’s push for same-sex marriage rights to ease the social and economic burden on children of gay couples, and the union’s push for a curriculum that opposes antigay stereotypes and bullying.
Quinlan hopes to change public schools’ curricula by opposing comprehensive sex education and by changing science lessons so that they conform to the ex-gay myths of P-FOX mentors Richard Cohen and NARTH.
He blames his own past homosexual behavior on an “abusive ‘Archie Bunker-type’ father,” followed by an inability to reconcile his sexual behavior with his faith and identity in a healthy and responsible fashion.
Instead of life improving at home, the father’s abuse toward him worsened. Eventually he filled his desperate need for affection at the hands of a young teen boy who introduced him to sex. Quinlan said he became a willing molestation victim.
Unfortunately, Quinlan now works to deny gay youths the safe and affirming support that might have protected him from “willing molestation” at the hands of an older boy.
Because his own same-sex attractions allegedly faded during counseling for his father’s abuse, Quinlan campaigns to coerce sexual change in persons whose same-sex orientation is not derived from environmental factors such as abuse or parental neglect.
For a trend toward increasing sexual honesty among gay youths in the schools, Quinlan blames Christians who are not emphatic enough in silencing gay youth and coercing change.
“We’ve allowed this to happen,” he said. “There are so many Secret Service Christians who need to come out of the closet, but we also need to know how to argue and debate persuasively. This conspiracy and its wheel have been around for decades.”
Quinlan has yet to demonstrate that he can argue and debate persuasively, however — his past efforts have been hindered by anger, stereotypes, strawman arguments, and disrespect for those who are sexually honest. Are we now to believe that a kinder, gentler Greg Quinlan is emerging?
Addendum: Almost one year after Quinlan was caught lying about mainstream professional mental-health consensus regarding ex-gay therapy, and in particular lying about the human-genome research of Dr. Francis Collins, Good As You noted last week that Quinlan is repeating the same lies in order to rationalize his opposition to federal legislation that would equalize punishment for antigay hate crimes.
“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’s not fair and can hinder their schoolwork.
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.
It’s been a heady couple of weeks for gay activists — and it keeps getting better. There were twin marriage victories in the unlikely states of Vermont and Iowa — doubling the number of places where gay people can get hitched. If that wasn’t enough, the New York Times reports that New York Gov. David Paterson will unveil plans this week to introduce marriage equality legislation.
On New York City’s Upper West Side, The Jewish Alliance for Change presented a benefit concert on Monday evening for marriage equality that featured a stunning array of stars. I spoke at the event and followed Linda Lavin — who played the lead in the television show “Alice.” It was exhilarating to be among the Broadway glitz and glamour. Most important, the event encapsulated what the movement has worked decades to achieve: broad mainstream support and cultural acceptance.
Unfortunately, while our movement bathed in the well-deserved spotlight, not everyone felt its warm glow. There are still gay people — particularly of school age — who feel the cool sting of homophobia. They are teased, harassed, humiliated and beaten on a daily basis. They enter the schoolyard in sheer terror — as if it were a prison yard ruled by fearsome gangs. (Read More)
On April 25, antigay activists — among them, Exodus and Focus on the Family — sought to disrupt antiviolence vigils in schools across the country. They sponsored walkouts and demonstrations in which religious activists, parents, and bullies sought to change the topic of the day from stopping violence in schools to venting prejudices and hostility toward gay youths. They followed up their efforts to shout down antiviolence vigils with a religious-right “Day of (Un)Truth” in schools on April 28; that day was dedicated exclusively to broadcasting religious rightists’ antigay prejudices and arrogant religious judgmentalism in public schools during school hours.
Because of antigay authorities’ refusal to stop antigay violence in schools, support for Days of Silence continues to grow. Plans are afoot for Days of Silence are afoot in Russia, Poland and Slovenia — regions where U.S. antigay pastor and Exodus speaker Ken Hutcherson has fueled antigay violence through his co-leadership of the Slavic hate group called Watchmen on the Walls. (Read More)
The April 25 national Day Of Silence unites students in a silent vigil against violence in schools, and in commemoration of the lives of Lawrence King and thousands of other youths who have been killed or assaulted because of their sexual orientation or gender expression.
The April 28 Day of Truth is something entirely different:
It is a pernicious effort by Exodus, the antigay Alliance Defense Fund, Focus on the Family, ex-gay activist Scott Lively, ex-gay activist Stephen Bennett, Mission: America, and other pro-bigotry organizations to divert public attention from school violence in order to discuss their fixation with homosexual sex on public-school property during school hours.
Teach The Facts, a group of Montgomery County, Maryland, parents and educators, offers a run-down on PFOX ex-gay literature that was distributed last week to local high-school students. TTF’s main points:
The PFOX literature falsely claims that PFOX promotes tolerance, but PFOX’s web site is loaded with literature opposing tolerance.
The PFOX literature illogically asserts that ex-gay self-denial, self-deception, and failure serve as proof that GLBT youth can and should seek help from unlicensed ex-gay therapists and political groups.
The PFOX literature falsely insinuates that ex-gay activists who seek to silence and suppress gay students support self-determination, while advocates for academic freedom, tolerance, learning, and nonviolence oppose self-determination and happiness.
At least two antifamily, pro-harassment organizations — Mission: America and the American “Family” Association — continued to lobby antigay parents today to shield their teen-agers from anti-bullying messages by keeping them home from school on April 25, which has been designated an annual Day of Silence by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.
The Day of Silence commemorates GLBT youths who were victims of school violence and murder, by reminding classmates that violence and harassment silence GLBT youths and their families.
The boycott against freedom of speech and nonviolence in schools is co-sponsored by the ex-gay Abiding Truth Ministries, American Family Association, Americans for Truth, Concerned Women for America, Exodus Mandate, Illinois Family Institute, Indiana Voice for the Family, Liberty Counsel, Mass Resistance, Mission: America, Parents’ Rights Coalition, the ex-gay Stephen Bennett Ministries, and Exodus conference speaker Ken Hutcherson’s pro-violence group Watchmen on the Walls.
In inland California, anti-tolerance organizations hope the boycott will prove financially costly to public schools and taxpayers, as school funding is said to be determined in part by attendance. A pro-discrimination group, Capitol Research Institute, has organized a counter-event euphemistically called a “Day of Learning” for antigay parents and students that participate in the pro-harassment boycott. What exactly will participants “learn”? According to The Press-Enterprise, they will learn how to gather signatures “to repeal a state law that prevents discrimination in schools based on sexual orientation.” Meanwhile, the antigay Alliance Defense Fund has declared April 28 to be an annual day when antigay students verbally harangue gay classmates with defamatory, egotistical, and hypocritical religious messages.
GLSEN has released the following ad featuring Lance Bass to counter pro-harassment, pro-silence propaganda that is being fed to students by antigay political organizations:
Meanwhile, pro-exgay pundit Warren Throckmorton continues his campaign against the anti-bullying day. Throckmorton’s proposal creates an artificial division between the Golden Rule and explicit opposition to antigay violence and harassment. Throckmorton may view his own campaign to supply students with misinformation as a lesser evil than that of the boycotters. But, in pandering to the worst elements of the pseudo-Christian religious right, Throckmorton trivializes both Christian values and the growing problem of antigay violence and harassment in schools.
Portland Fellowship, an Exodus affiliate program in Portland, Oregon, has launched a web site to recruit churches to the ex-gay cause. Supporters are asked to pick a church, write a recruitment letter, and send $25 per church. The $25 apparently buys each church an ex-gay CD-ROM and a Starbucks $5 gift card. One critic noted that Starbucks is among the top gay-inclusive companies, according to Human Rights Campaign. Obvious question: Were the cards purchased by the Fellowship or donated by Starbucks?
Randall Harp is a supporter of the antihomosexual agenda — that is, an agenda that opposes the supposed gay agenda (whatever that is). Harp attempts to separate gay people from their agenda their freedom by appealing to fear and strawman arguments.
A middle-aged British woman asks whether she has become ex-straight.
Box Turtle Bulletin fact-checks ex-gay propaganda that was provided by Exodus and NARTH (a reparative-therapy advocacy group) and recently marketed to the American Fork High School PTSA in Utah.
Beyond Ex-Gay, a support group for survivors of ex-gay programs, celebrates its first anniversary. Congratulations!
Addendum: Portland Fellowship confirmed to TWO that Starbucks gift cards are purchased with the $25-per-church contribution. Starbucks was chosen for its availability.
Sprigg is also one of the few local citizens to serve on a citizens’ advisory board for Montgomery County Public Schools in Washington, D.C.’s Maryland suburbs.
Quinlan says these things during a visit to San Diego for the National Education Association’s convention on behalf of the antigay parents’ group P-FOX and its “Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus.” He also consults for the New Jersey Family Policy Council, an affiliate of Focus on the Family. (P-FOX recently 
