The things you find online...
The Day of Silence has an opponent in the US, in Snoqualmie Valley school district to be exact, calling itself the Coalition to Defend Education. Someone's apparently figured out that objecting to the Day on the basis that it's "pro-homosexual" isn't working out. This group bases their opposition to the day on the claims that "it creates unsafe conditions for students, disrupts teaching, and contributes to a biased environment at MSHS[Mount Si High School]."
Since I've yet to see a group that objects to this Day that doesn't have an anti-gay agenda tucked away somewhere, I decided to have a look at what was out there on this group. Besides their love affair with the man who proudly advocates that "God hates effeminate men", Pastor Ken Hutcherson, I haven't found a great deal about them.
Strange what I have found, though:
Here [UPDATE: I have voluntarily removed the actual hyperlink to this page as a gesture of goodwill to the Garding family, after someone complained about me "publishing that family photo on my site"] is a fairly cheesy photo of what may or may not be the members of this CoDE organisation, courtesy of a family website maintained by the Garding family.
Here is a public listing of when CoDE has booked out a Meeting Room at North Bend library on March 12th, from 6pm to 8:30pm.
Nothing particularly useful. But it is kind of personal. I know it's standard among heavy net users to view all information that a person or organisation chooses to make world-readable as fair game for the rest of the world to read, but still..
The whois data comes back with a private registrant called Oneandone private registration. No leads there.
Not much more I can say unfortunately, except I'm impressed that a day intended to highlight the problem of anti-gay harassment is successfully attracting so much public harassment. Kind of proves the point I think.
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2 comments:
Is the Day of Silence (which is "intended to highlight the problem of anti-gay harassment"), supposed to be accompanied by coercion of students to participate in the day if they don't want to? That is what's happening at Mount Si High School.
Is it acceptable for participants to harass any student who isn't participating and call them "anti-gay" because they didn't join in? Is it acceptable on the Day of Silence for a student to get slapped because he wore a shirt that said "I'm straight"? Isn't this a day sponsored by the Gay/STRAIGHT Alliance? So much for "tolerance." That is what is happening at Mount Si High School.
For a group that OSTENSIBLY claims to be trying to find tolerance and acceptance, the behavior of the Gay/Straight Alliance (GSA) at MSHS shows that they consider everyone AGAINST THEM if they aren't carrying a banner for them. The GSA is hypocritical, prejudiced, intolerant, and bigoted.
They love to dump these words on others, but when someone points this out in their own behavior, they scream "You hate us because we are gay! Let's call a lawyer!"
If they would, for a moment, step back and look at themselves with any semblence of objectivity, they would see that THEY are doing the same thing to students who don't participate in the Day of Silence that they complain is happening to them.
Good for the Coalition to Defend Education! After two years of complaints about coercion and harassment from parents, the school administrators are FINALLY listening.
Well, "mshs parent", your charges are very serious, and if true, should be investigated.
I say "if true" because there is a long history of people opposed to homosexuality making grandiose claims of being persecuted and shunned, only to have those claims fall apart when people actually examine the true situation. For example:
(1)In Massachussetts, self-described "pro-family" group MassResistance claimed that "gay activists" had encouraged children to beat up the son of David Parker for Mr Parker's stance on homosexuality. But Mr Parker later admitted to the Boston Globe that "there was no evidence that an adult had directly incited students to bully his son", and everything that the superintendent had said about it being a small scuffle over lunchroom seating, unrelated to Mr Parker's political activities, has never been formally disputed by anyone. This backdown by Parker and Massresistance from their false and hurtful accusations didn't occur until AFTER Superintendent Paul Ash and principal Joni Jay had received hundreds of vitriolic and threatening e-mails and phone calls from "loving" Christians telling them what they really thought of them, by the way.
(2)At Arlington Fair, the anti-gay group PFOX made grandiose claims about being the victim of a "hate crime" (a concept which they completely oppose, by the way). Yet when other people at Arlington Fair asked if events transpired the way PFOX claimed, the answer was unequivocal: It did not happen, according to Vice President of the Arlington County Fair, Jackie Abrams. John Lisle of the Arlington County Police Department have "no records, reports or recollection of any incident at the Arlington County Fair as described by PFOX."
(3) Most telling of all is the incident at the Falls Church Community Center. In this case, all that happened is that a person tried to take a picture of a PFOX activist and this was immediately slammed as "causing an altercation" by the person involved. When the person being threatened by this anti-gay activist merely asked "Do I have to call the police?", the anti-gay activist then said that this amounted to "accosting him".
(5) In New York, Christian protestors were arrested and fined for nothing more than "praying silently", if you believe the anti-gay version of events. A mainstream news report which names the actual charges paints a very different picture: they disobeyed a police order to stop blocking the event, and when they refused, were fined. The horrible, horrible tally of this fine for obstructing the stage? $100, plus $95 costs. Gosh, however would the saints of yesteryear cope with the terrible, terrible persecutions suffered by "Christians" (or more accurately, Christianists) today?
So when you list these allegedly horrible deeds, "mshs parent", I hope you understand why I'm extremely skeptical. Perhaps answering a few questions might help reduce my skepticism:
How do you know that any of these things happened? Were you there for any of them?
If you were, "mshs parent", how would I be able to tell?
If you weren't, who is your source of first-hand information, and why should I believe their side of the story more than anyone else's?
Personally I think it all sounds very much like small-town gossip: petty, vindictive, and exaggerated. But I would welcome some verifiable facts, assuming anyone's actually able to present any.
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