Yesterday was the Day of Silence, a day when students all over the country refused to speak, in silent solidarity with those whose voices have been silenced by hatred and bigotry.  Sounds just like one of those foofoo liberal protest kinda things that the bleeding hearts are always doing…right…?  I mean…what the hell is that all about anyway…who needs it…why can’t they just stop waving it in our faces…?

Three-quarters of students surveyed across America said that over the past year they heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke" frequently or often at school, and nearly nine out of ten  reported hearing "that’s so gay" or "you’re so gay" – meaning stupid or worthless – frequently or often.

Over a third of students said they experienced physical harassment at school on the basis of sexual orientation and more than a quarter on the basis of their gender expression. 

Nearly one-in-five students reported they had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and over a tenth  because of their gender expression.

Today the other side gets its shot.  They’re calling it, without any apparent irony, the Day Of Truth.  And if you’re wondering when truth ever even remotely mattered to a group of people who wave Paul Cameron’s lies about homosexuals around like a goddamn bible, then you’re probably a filthy heathen.

Via Ex-Gay Watch, here’s what Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund, which fights anti-bullying measures in public schools with the ferocity of…well…a bunch of bullies, has to say about it:

“Day of Truth” participants will hand out cards of their own, offering to share a candid, loving, fact-based counterpoint to the unspoken assertions of the advocates for homosexual behavior. While making their case from a Christian perspective, the “Day of Truth”ers will confront with compassion — not condemnation — and restrict their discussions to the periods before, after and between classes.

Loving.  Compassion.  Not Condemnation.  How about a little truth in this Day Of Truth?  In April 2004, while other students at Poway High School in northern San Diego County were observing the Day Of Silence, student Tyler Harper put masking tape all over the shirt he was wearing, and wrote messages on it specifically to let the gay students at Poway High School know his contempt for them, and for those who thought their lives, and their right to a decent education, were worth defending:

A candid, loving, fact-based counterpoint….confronting with compassion, not condemnation…  If you’d think the Alliance would object to this sort of thing…well…think again.  The school ordered Harper to take it off.  Harper, with the help of Alan Sears and his Alliance Defense Fund, sued the school.  They lost:

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that a T-shirt that proclaimed "Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned" on the front and "Homosexuality Is Shameful" on the back was "injurious to gay and lesbian students and interfered with their right to learn." The court said that the shirt can be barred on a public high school campus without violating the 1st Amendment.

"We conclude that" Poway High School student Tyler Harper’s wearing of his T-shirt " ‘collides with the rights of other students’ in the most fundamental way," wrote 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, quoting a passage from Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of students.

"Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion, or sexual orientation have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses. As Tinker clearly states, students have the right to ‘be secure and to be let alone,’ " Reinhardt said.

It seems so simple.  All American kids have a right to an education, that’s what the public schools are for.  They’re there for the fundamentalist kids, and the heathens alike, but they’re there for everyone.   While you’re in school, you have to respect each other.  That means the other kids can’t harass you, and you can’t harass the other kids.  It seems so simple.  But it isn’t.  That kind of live and let live agreement is anathema to the religious right.

Had a the school allowed its students to wear t-shirts condemning fundamentalist Christianity as shameful and telling the student body it should be ashamed for tolerating the fundamentalists among them, Alan Sears would be furiously throwing lawsuits around like an antipersonnel mine throwing shrapnel.  But let the school tell fundamentalists kids they can’t to the same thing to their gay and lesbian peers, and Sears sides with the harassing students.  Hypocrisy?  Oh mes non!  Fundamentalists have rights that no one else has…because they’re god’s favorite people.  To claim that the heathens have the same rights they do isn’t merely an attack on their privileged status, it’s literally an attack on God Almighty Himself.  Heathens simply don’t have the same rights god’s people do.  Certainly not the right to be left alone.  Especially not the right to an education.

Or for that matter, the right to even live.  In Iraq and Iran as I write this, gay people are being kidnapped and tortured to death at the behest of the mullahs, whose sense that they are god’s right hand is little different from the theocrats of the religious right here in America.  Exodus’ Randy Thomas takes note of that, and compares it to the persecution Christians face…

If you are Christian in Iran … you get stoned to death.

If you have same sex attraction in Iran … you get stoned to death

If you are a Christian who struggles with same sex attraction in Iran … you get the point.

Alas…he doesn’t.

We must keep this in mind for perspective and seek out ways to intercede (prayer and other ways) for our Christian siblings and for those being murdered because of their sexual orientation.

Homophobia is not some off the cuff comment about Tinky Winky.  Homophobia is what you see happening in Iran.  I am grateful for the Dutch government finally giving asylum to those fleeing Iran.  I pray that those who want to find Christ will and those who want to overcome homosexuality will be allowed their right to self-determine that path for their lives as well.

What’s missing from this?  Any hint that homosexuals in Iran have the right to exist just as they are.  Thomas’s prayer is only for those who wish to change.  For the rest, he has no prayers.

Exodus is now taking it’s tacit approval of anti-gay violence to the caribbean, and to Jamaca, where a murderous killing nightmare is taking place.  Wayne Besen writes:

An article in last week’s Time magazine calls Jamaica the "most homophobic place on Earth." It points out that two of the island’s leading gay rights advocates, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, were recently ruthlessly slain. If that was not enough, a crowd essentially danced on Williamson’s grave by celebrating over his mutilated body.

In 2004, a father learned his son was gay and went to his school to invite a group of peers to lynch his son. Now that’s family values!

Not too long after this sickening episode, witnesses claim, police egged on a mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. Earlier this year, a Kingston man, Nokia Cowan, drowned after a crowd shouting "batty boy" (a Jamaican slur for queer) chased him off a dock.

"Jamaica is the worst any of us has ever seen," Rebecca Schleifer of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch explained to Time.

Into this malstrom, comes Exodus, with this message:

Some say decriminalise homosexuality……we say lets offer solutions

Solutions…

That’s what was left of Brian Williamson after the mobs got through with him.  Another human life lost to hate.  Another voice forever silenced.  Truth.  But for Exodus, PFOX and the Alliance Defense Fund to come out strongly against anti-gay violence would be to completely contradict their own message, which is that homosexuals can leave behind all the harmful effects of the gay lifestyle any time they want to.  Change is possible.  Or, to put it another way, whatever happens to homosexuals is their own fault. 

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. -Leviticus 20:13

There is the ex-gay message.  Not Change Is Possible, but Their Blood Shall Be Upon Them.  Brian Williamson.  Nicolas West.  Billy Jack Gaither.  Gwen Araujo.  Matthew Shepard.  Barry Winchell.  Allen Schindler.  Seventeen year old Kristofer Guy King, who was killed when a neo nazi with a knife broke into the trailer he was sleeping in, looking for his eighteen year old gay friend.  This is what happened to his friend’s mom, Patricia Wells:

Truth.