To call homosexuality a sin – or in this case, an abomination against God, which is what the BIble verse the Klanbrat’s shirt pointed to says – is to call for hatred, discrimination and violence against innocent homosexuals.
Would you let the kid wear a shirt that said “Black people are a parasite on the great white race” to school on MLK day? I hope not.
:rolleyes:
How many times do we have to explain the differences between paedophilia and necrophilia, and homosexuality?
The onus is on people who think our rights ought to be abridged to prove we are of any danger to society. And yet we just go around and around in circles because of people who are desperately trying to justify irrational – and frequently religiously-based – prejudices through pseudo-rational means.
Connecting paedophilia and homosexuality on the basis of both being a sexual minority is like saying a baseball and an orange are both edible because both are round and approximately the same size.
Spoken like someone who has absolutely no clue as to the endless terror, utter horror and limitless pain that it is to be a gay teenager in an American public school.
A lot of gay teens are already at the edge of killing themselves. Nice to see you support allowing other students to give them that last needed push.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Unless you can demonstrate either[list][li]The state has some compelling interest in suppressing this speech, [/li][/quote]
The state has a compelling interest in protecting innocent gay students from discrimination, and the negative psychological effects of hate speech. Just as it has a compelling interest in doing the same for any other oppressed minorities.
YOu, as a hater of gay people, no doubt disagree. But it’s the thought that people like you hate me that keeps me warm at night.
You won’t give a damn, but the anti-gay rhetoric I endured in high school led me to attempt suicide twice, and hung me on the edge for most of the rest of the time I was there. Seeing people gleefully walking around in a shirt that, in effect, says “GOD HATES YOU YOU WORTHLESS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT FAGGOT” would almost certainly have led to another.
I never in my life heard my parents say one bad thing about homosexuals. Until I came out my sophomore year in college, and was declared a “disgusting pervert” by my father and told that I would “die of AIDS” by my mother. Needless to say, another suicide attempt followed.
It was not direct; it was arguably hateful; it was not personal; it was not specific; and it was not an attack. It mentioned a behavior that the asshole wearing the shirt finds distasteful.
No. But I would allow a kid to wear a shirt that says, “Jesus lost a weekend for your sins,” or one that said, “Christianity is a collection of superstitious nonsense,” or one that said, “Vote Republican: it’s easier than thinking,” or one that said, “Jesus died for your sins, not mine.” I would also not allow a kid to wear a shirt that said, “Beat up homosexuals.” Your analogy is totally false.
Kids’ right to wear clothing with offensive political messages is described in Tinker. Bethel limits the rights of kids to give sexually explicit messages to a captive audience. Derby limits the rights of a kid to use a political symbol when it’s been specifically forbidden by the school, based on compelling evidence that use of that symbol will incite violence. The case at hand is unrelated to Bethel and doesn’t meet the standards set by Derby.
Nobody has suggested that kids have the right to wear clothing that communicates a threat. Whether some other kid reads a threat where none is intended is an entirely different question; Tinker strongly implies that such a standard cannot hold.
Daniel
**
If I were a gay student in that high school, I would have felt directly, personally attacked. I would consider it an attempt to intimidate me and a threat of physical violence – because the kind of scum who quote those Bible verses almost certainly will get violently eventually.
I would probably have sued the school for mental duress had I been a student, and not afraid of coming out publicly. And the kid. And the kid’s parents. And the kid’s church.
If I wasn’t driven to the hysterically depressed point of another suicide attempt, that is.
Of course, the kid probably would love to be the cause of some gay suicides. People like him won’t be happy until every single gay person in the world is dead.
But if you actually look at the biblical quote being referenced, it is a death threat: Leviticus 20 explicitly calls for the death of homosexuals. Expecting us to pretend that Christians are “hating the sin, not the sinner” when they quote chapter and verse that calls for our death is rediculous.
This kid and his defenders are the vilest of scum, taking a protest against violence as an excuse to push their twisted, hateful agenda. The very fact that these sick fucks interpret a protest against violence as “promoting the homosexual agenda” says everything that needs to be said about them.
First off - I don’t know the kid, but his shirt sounds like a tract - “Humans are sinful, separated from God, Jesus dies to bring them together, yay Jesus!”
Second - This likely isn’t true everywhere, but I know a few people who do believe that homosexual acts are sinful (like lying or not acting loving towards people) and regard their homosexual friends highly. You’d never know, unless you asked, what they thought. I don’t know what I believe yet, all I care about is treating others as I’d like to be treated.
I just need to say that while this viewpoint makes sense to me:
It also doesn’t. There are so many thing out there called “sins.” Christians are taught that mankind is born sinful. We’re just not perfect. Sin doesn’t equal sub-human, it means we are like them, they’re like us. We’re alike in a sinful state. Of course, this doesn’t mean you walk up to someone who doesn’t believe as you do and bash them over the head with what you believe, so the kid is out of line there.
I know there are people out there who use this verse among others to “support” their hatred. I just wish you could meet the people who, unless you asked them, you’d never guess that they think homosexual acts are sinful. I know a few who will be voting for gay marriage if it’s presented and cannot understand the hate acts that happen.
I can see both points - as hateful speech, and as protest…I just really can’t pick a side unless I knew the kid and knew what he wanted to accomplish. He could just be some church-punk kid. Maybe people will view his shirt as intolerant and vow to never be like that. That’d be a good thing to come out of this.
**
It doesnt say “humans.” It singles out a vulnerable, at-risk, innocent population of his fellow students, points a finger of hate at them and screams “ABOMINATION! GOD WANTS US TO STONE YOU TO DEATH!” That’s what those verses from the not-so-good Book say, after all.
I would hope they’d have the decency to tell me upfront and to my face that they despise the very core, unmutable, trumps-all-other facets of my being, so that I might ensure that I never encounter them again for the rest of my days.
My love is not a sin. My love is just a beautiful, and pure and laudable as the love of any two heterosexuals. Anyone who says otherwise hates me to the very core of my being, and will be treated in kind. I will do unto others as they do unto me.
Yes, I am aware of the barbaric doctrine of “Original Sin.”
The hate text in question didn’t call gay people sinners, it calls us abominations worthy of death. That’s just a wee bit different.
Because of small minded peons like them, who treat love like a sin and who worship a leatherbound hate tract that defiles entire swaths of innocent people as “abominations” who deserve death.
The trouble is that the grotesque over-reactions of the drama queens among us - of whatever orientation - do not invalidate the rights of citizens to speak their minds.
It doesn’t matter who badly others react to disagreement. People still have the right to disagree. Threats of meltdown do not change that.
Some people disagree. People have to learn to deal with that.
Regards,
Shodan
Geez. “Hysterical” is right.
Whether you would have felt attacked by this t-shirt has nothing to do with whether it was actually an attack, apparently.
I don’t suppose you’d care to offer the tiniest smidgen of evidence for this viewpoint, would you? Hell, let’s weaken it: let’s change the proposition from “almost certainly will” to “are more likely than not to.”
The first sentence is a prime example of excluding the middle; the second sentence implies that you’ll wear t-shirts that they might find insulting, which I don’t see as a problem at all.
Daniel
See, I was all ready to yell at you, Shodan, but then spectrum said everything I wanted to say.
Well, if you were going to make statements as poorly reasoned as spectrum’s were, perhaps it is best that you didn’t bother.
Left Hand of Dorkness has already pointed out that the t-shirt’s message was neither direct, personal, nor specific. Whether or not it was “hateful” obviously depends on how you interpret it.
“Homosexuality is a sin” means “kill the gays” in exactly the same way as “The war in Iraq is wrong” means “Kill Bush”.
If it is not possible to “love the sinner but hate the sin”, then every disagreement is a death threat. From any side. I don’t believe that is the case, at least for this kid and his t-shirt. Why is it the case from your side?
Regards,
Shodan
Indeed. When quoting a perfectly valid religious text (i.e. not from that Athelas Brainwashing Book of Doom) is considered hate speech (with arguments such as “I don’t care what he said, he said what I say he said!”) I get really scared, considering how fashionable anti-hate-speech laws are becoming.
Those who believe that it’s all right for a group to state an intial message, but for someone to rebut it would be to provoke violence, do you think that if a (say) anti-abortion group got permission to do a rally first, pro-choicers should be denied their say?
I’ll add that the two local papers, the Mountain Times and the Watauga Democrat, haven’t picked this story up yet. Nor have I seen any source of this story other than the WND. As I said earlier, I’m only arguing this story based on the facts given by the WND; I do not trust that these facts are complete or accurate.
Daniel
One more thing. This is the most convincing argument you put forth: a shirt that calls for the death of a group of people, even if it’s based on a religious text, is pretty damned alarming, and I’m much more hesitant to defend it. I was going to post that I agreed with you to the extent that the verses advocated killing homosexuals, it should be forbidden.
But, just in case you were keeping to your current pattern of wild hyperbole (to put it nicely – to put it meanly, I’d call it a cavalier disregard for the truth, or even deliberate lying), I looked up the verses mentioned in the article. We’re talking King James Version here:
Leviticus 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (note that it, not thou, is abomination).
Revelation 21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Roman 10:9-10 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Psalm 132:9 Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy saints shout for joy.
Stone anyone to death? Nope! The closest you get is the obvious conclusion from the first and second quote that men who sleep with other men are going to hell.
Offensive, sure, ridiculous, you betcha–but not a death threat, or an advocacy of violence.
Good thing I looked it up before conceding the point to you, eh, spectrum?
Daniel
:rolleyes:
Leviticus 20:13: “'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Are you going to deny this?
Just because most of these fuckers are too cowardly to risk going to jail does not mean they are not threatening us. They quite explicitly say that they believe every word of the bible is true, then use Levitican laws to condemn us.
:rolleyes: , as you say, indeed. Wouldn’t you just have a great point, if only Leviticus 20:13 were one of the quotes listed on this asshole’s t-shirt?
Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for the kids at the school, this WASN’T one of the listed quotes. Your point is completely irrelevant, at best, and perilously close to a lie.
Daniel
These people constantly say that they follow “every word of the bible” (while ignoring the actual teachings of Jesus). When someone says they follow a book literally, and that book actively calls for the death of people like me- silly me, I take that as a threat. In my copy of the KJV, you don’t even have to turn a frikkin’ page to get from “abomination” to “death”. The fact that this jackass claims a protest against violence is “promoting the gay agenda” might also clue you in to the fact that he intends to be threatening.
In school, this shirt is threatening and more importantly it is a distraction. Kids go to school to be educated, not to be threatened by troglodytes like this. If this asshole wants to wear his shirt in the real world he is welcome to, and he can face the consequences.