That little guy needs to stop picking on that big guy.
Seriously, what a jerk.
Ah, springtime. It's almost time again for the
Day of Silence, an anti-bullying event held every year to protest the harassment of, and often violence against, LGBT students in American schools and colleges. This is of course intolerable to the people who do the most harassing, and so the day is met each year with a counter-event held by far-right religious folks holding the
Day of Dialogue, which used to be the
Day of Truth, which is a day meant to encourage students to speak up more loudly about which of their fellow students are going straight to hell and why. The anti-bullying efforts of the gay community and others, you see, infringes on the rights of the bigots to
insult and harass people as they see fit. Oh, and because telling people
not to bully others for being gay is "indoctrinating" them. We demand the right to be intolerant!
Via Right Wing Watch, here's a Focus on the Family person commiserating with Christian radio host Janet Mefferd on the insidiousness of the anti-bullying efforts:
Cushman: It’s been around for a longtime, nearly a decade now. It started just as a group of college students, actually this was first intended for older students but now GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has done a good job of infiltrating this event all the way down to middle schools, sometimes even elementary I believe, and the event is now in I would say nearly 8,000 middle schools and high schools and some colleges today.
Mefferd: Wow. What goes on during the Day of Silence? Obviously they are silent and it’s all about bringing attention to the LGBT issues but how does it play itself out?
Cushman: Well they say it’s all about promoting safe schools and anti-bullying but if you look at what they actually encourage students and teachers to do it crosses the line in a lot of ways beyond bullying into indoctrination, just promoting homosexuality and transgenderism. For example they encourage teachers on this day to discuss LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender themes in the classroom, to have materials on homosexuality and transgenderism displayed, books about it in the classroom, they have encouraged students to lobby for things like a ‘queer friendly prom.’ So it really gets into transforming students into being actions for adult gay and lesbian causes.
Mefferd: Wait, queer friendly prom? Is that what I think it is?
Cushman: That’s their word. That any combination of genders can go to prom together. it’s a problem when you have these things endorsed by the school.
Oh my God,
any combination of genders can go to prom together? What's next, teens pooling their money for limo rides to and from the event? Spiking the punch with Red Bull? This is madness! In my day, if someone went to prom without a date or two boys or two girls or three girls and two boys or two girls and three boys were seen dancing together, without proper gender pairing, we'd beat the crap outta them. Now it's just
tolerated! The dancing! The genders! The lack of some young, fresh-faced asshole standing in the middle of the room screaming at everyone that they'll have plenty of time to dance in Hell, because that's right where they're all going!
The purpose of the Day of Truth (yes, yes, now it's the Day of Dialogue) was, as I said before, to "encourage" religious people to speak out against LGBT students and how they're offending the sensibilities of the religious folks (because, apparently, there's not enough of that already). You have to sink pretty low to stage a counter-event to something meant to end bullying, but religious conservatives have been playing the how-low-can-you-go game for a long time, now, so it doesn't even qualify as surprising anymore.
Encouraging harassment of students for religious reasons. Now that's what we mean by American Taliban.