I don’t believe that for a second. They are instigating an organized political campaign to strip gays slowly but surely of our humanity. Once that is done, they will kill us. The eradication of gays everywhere is and always will be a political end goal for the fundamentalist trash and their very own political party, the GOP.
A bulls–t platitude used to cover their deep seated hatred of all non-fundamentalist Christians. Hate the sinner hate the sin is how they live their lives. They hate gay people and work to ruin the lives of innocent homosexuals. They hate us and want us to be denied the basic protections our nation offers to its citizens. They want us forced back into the living death that is the closet to rot forever.
They want us destroyed, and they raise their children to hate the gay kids in schools with them, leading to rampant anti-gay violence and oppression.
No difference. It still calls for the annihilation of all gay people everywhere. That makes Leviticus a hate text that has no place being allowed anywhere near any public schools.
Because they are either evil, or they are imbecilees.
To try to force an innocent gay person back into the living hell of the closet is violence that defies measure or scale. It is easily one of the cruelest things any person could ever do to another. It is pure hatred, pure malice, pure, undiluted, evil. In other words, it is the perfect fruit of fundamentalism.
Matt, I don’t mean to be disingenuous, and you’re not really the one making the appalling argument. It is not disingenuous, however, to point out that school administrations in the Bible Belt are likelier to squelch pro-gay student speech than to squelch anti-gay student speech: I honestly believe it is in the interests of PFLAG, LGBT alliances, etc. to protect the rights of student speech against administrations, even if doing so means letting assholes like Austin spew their asshole positions.
FWIW, I am in almost entire agreement with your position, with the trivial addendum that since the school’s manual precluded slurs against religion (I think), they would be on slightly sturdier ground forbidding an antisemitic shirt.
Naturally they’d be on very sturdy ground forbidding a shirt that called for killing Jews, just like they’d be on sturdy ground forbidding a shirt that called for attacking gay people. But I think you and I are in essential agreement on this point, or at least aren’t in disagreement.
Fair enough - I should amend it to say “why are some posters in this thread so interested, etc.”.
It goes back to what I said earlier about the “reasonable person” standard. Reasonable people don’t assume that everyone who disagrees with them is going to beat them to death. Some in this thread do.
The point remains, why should someone’s over-reactions revoke the Constitution? They don’t like this kid’s t-shirt; he doesn’t like their National Day of Silence. Neither gets to shut down the other.
spectrum, I don’t hate you. I hate your stupidity, I hate your willingness to abandon the First Amendment, I hate your hysteria and immaturity, but I don’t hate you.
It’s a t-shirt. It’s not a tin foil hat. You are reading things into it that aren’t there.
It is possible to disagree with someone reasonably.
I may be a reactionary, Shodan, but I am not stupid. Just because I don’t agree with your bigotted horseshit worldview doesn’t make me stupid —it makes me a human being capable of emotion and compassion. You have no compassion for anyone who isn’t just like you.
And it is possible to disagree “reasonably.” But I will not be “reasonable” by your standards when someone helps create a culture where violence preys on innocent gay teens.
My equality as a human being is not a “reasonable” topic for debate. The equal validity of my relationship is not a “reasonable” topic for debate. And anything, no matter how benign it may appear to a gay-hating bigot like yourself, that could possibly endanger gay teens is not “reasonable” to debate. It must simply be stamped out.
Protecting the oppressed from their oppressors is by far the most important duty and function of government. All other concerns must be secondary, or the bigots win.
Oh, there is no doubt about the emotion part. Lots and lots of emotion. Lots.
And isn’t it interesting that you characterize the belief that the First Amendment applies to everyone as “bigotted horseshit”.
You mean I have no compassion for hysterical drama queens?
Apparently not in your case.
They aren’t my standards. Look at Left Hand of Dorkness - he is as gay-friendly as you believe me not to be, and he also thinks you are unreasonable.
Again, the standard to be applied is that of a reasonable person. You aren’t that person.
It isn’t how benign it appears to me. It is how sinister simple disagreement appears to the drama queens among us - that is what fails to reach the “reasonable person” standard.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider deprecation of our lives and equal citizenship - the argument that we’re damned to hell - a little more than “disagreement.”
As I said, this argument isn’t given standing with regard to any race or nationality; it’s tiresome to have people insist that we, uniquely, must deal with it patiently.
Do you have some evidence of it, or did you read it in your tarot deck? What are the winning numbers fornext week lottery?
Attacking bigots is easy. I see plenty of people attacking bigots then the cause is quite popular and suddendly becoming silent when the issue is much less popular and widespread.
How can I know whether you’ll fall or not in the “silent” category when some unpopular people’s rights will have to be protected?
It’s more than disagreement only if you believe in hell. And if you happen to believe in it, you also know that the guy with the shirt isn’t the one who will get to decide on whether you’re bound to hell or not.
But once again, I can’t construct “you’re damned to hell” as a threat without endorsing a particular religious belief at the first place. Something that the regulating authorities (school boards or courts) can’t do.
And “you’re a sinner” isn’t an insult, either. It’s a statement which plainly has no sense outside a very specific religious frame.
The notion that someone else’s opinion deprives anyone of citizenship is silly. We don’t live in a theocracy.
You do not have the right to try to shut this kid up, even if you don’t like his opinion.
No one is insisting anything of the sort. Everyone has to deal with the fact that people disagree with some or most of our opinions. And no one has the right to silence us because of it.
People have a right to their opinion. You don’t have to like it. You have to tolerate it, just like we have to tolerate yours. You want to argue against it, go ahead. You want to demonstrate against it, go ahead. You want to silence it, no.
Very well. Let’s have someone go to school on Yom Ha’Shoah in a “Jews are damned to hell” t-shirt and see how long she lasts, and where the outrage part comes in.
In the meantime, please don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs. I made no comment as to whether it was constitutional or not to remove the kid. My comment was on the disparity between the treatment of hate speech against any other minority and hate speech against queers.
I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Watch the Fox News commentators decry this attack on free speech while in the next sentence approve of the Government mandated moratorium on photographs of flag draped coffins.
Several years ago in my home town, the city council drummed up red-tape related reasons to stop a Marilyn Manson concert. This same city council had no problems with a Klan rally, political speech must be protected after all…
Certainly some of his support comes from first amendment absolutists, but where is the hue and cry we’re hearing now when congress forces television manufacturers to include unwanted V-chips in all televisions? Where is World Net Dailys concern for free speech then? :rolleyes:
Spectrum I believe you need to take a long look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you have a pretty bigotted horseshit worldview.
As much as I find someone telling me that Jesus loves me and will forgive my sins to be the height of arrogance it is usually meant well. For example my father is a devout catholic who commonly tells me that its my faith and I will find it someday. As a soft atheist I find this deeply insulting that in that by his comments he is telling me I cannot make decisions for myself. This does not change the fact that he is truely concerned about me and loves me. If a christain said to you, homosexuality is a sin repent and find Jesus it is verry offensive. It does not change the fact that most of them do mean well.
No mainstream christian church will regard someone commiting a sin as just cause for hatred, discrimination and violence.
That is not what this shirt is saying. It is saying homosexuality is a sin, if you sin you go to hell, if you repent Jesus will save you.
This is a completely unjust accusation of people that quote Bible versus. While a very small minority will commit violence while quoting them the vast majority also read the parts about hate the sin love the sinner and love thy neighbor.
Again this is not what mainstream christians think, in fact I cannot think of an instance where christians stoned a homosexual to death in the last 200 years.
His shirt was not protesting an end for violence against gays. All it said was that homosexuality is a sin, if you sin you go to hell, if you find Jesus you will be saved.
“The Day of Silence, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in collaboration with the United States Student Association (USSA), is a student-led day of action where those who support making anti-LGBT bias unacceptable in schools take a day-long vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment – in effect, the silencing – experienced by LGBT students and their allies.”
If you notice their mission statement mentions nothing about violence. Obviously discrimination and harassment are very close to violence but the NDoS is in fact a protest to gain equal rights for gays.
You can’t seriously believe that everyone or even a significant minority of people that think homosexuality is a sin want to eradicate gays.
Again the vast majority of fundamentalists think homosexuality is a sin. They do not however want to eradicate gay people or dedicate their lives to ruining the lives of homosexuals.
Again fundamentalist christians are not “pure undiluted evil”.
To sum up you are accusing this kid of the exact same thing you are doing. You have a fucked up biggoted view of christians and I think you need to take a look at your prejudices and address them.
To adress some of the other points made. I agree with you that wearing this shirt and holding his beliefs is utterly wrong. I also hate the fact that homosexuals have to deal with the shit they do. I hate the fact that my friends refer to things as gay and tell me that if their kid is gay they will “beat it out of them”. I have made my view abudently clear that they are bigoted assholes and that they have 0 right to tell two adults how to act. I hate the fact that two people that love each other cannot live in peace and happiness as a couple. But what I will not due is cirumvent the rights of other people to disagree with me by eliminating their right to free speech. The fact still remains that this shirt is not hate speech and any reasonable person will see that.
What, exactly, IS it if it’s more than disagreement? I mean, sure, it’s offensive and ignorant, but expressing offensive, ignorant disagreement is protected speech.
Dammit, how many times do I have to tell you that this simply isn’t true? Sure, there’s no agent in the first part of your sentence above, but I give it equal standing with regard to race and nationality. I hope that one day these Biblical passages are regarded with the same contempt currently given to the Jewish Blood Libel. But I do not think we hasten that by suppressing speech about them.
Now. In the Pit thread that I started, Blalron claimed that Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier indicated that the school’s actions were copacetic, based on the following quote from that opinion:
This has the same problem as several other arguments advanced in this thread: namely, Blalron is ignoring the conditions the court set up in which the administration may suppress student speech. From the same court case:
The bolded text indicates that Hazelwood is totally irrelevant to the case at hand.
I don’t know about Spectrum, but I can certainly believe that. “Eradicate” doesn’t mean “kill”, it means “to do away with as completely as if by pulling up by the roots”. Although I do not believe such a thing is possible in real life, homosexuals could theoretically be eradicated by just convincing them all to stop being homosexual or by keeping young people from hearing about homosexuality so they’re never tempted to “turn gay”. Surely those who think homosexuality is a grave sin would be happy if such a thing were to happen.
In re the main issue here, from the article linked to in the OP it looks like the school claimed that the boy’s shirt violated their rule against “Clothing or emblems which are offensive to any race, gender or religion”. Given that children must attend school and have no escape from bigoted peers, I think it is reasonable to enact rules to protect them. But whether you agree with such rules or not, they are the current rules. Did the shirt violate the school’s rules?
The student is quoted in the article as saying “Last I checked, homosexual was not a third gender. I for one am a male, and I’m certainly not trying to bash my own gender either.” Now, “gender” is sometimes used synonymously with “sex” (as in “male” or “female”), and this is apparently how the student is using the word. But I think if the school had meant only “sex” they could have said so. They instead chose to use the word “gender”, which also refers to the social/behavioral/mental states typically associated with one sex or the other.
“Being attracted to males” is a state typically associated with females and “being attracted to females” is a state typically associated with males, so I think sexual orientation could arguably fall under the umbrella of “gender”. This is admittedly pushing things a bit, but I don’t think it’s completely absurd. Of course, this case would have been much more clear if the school had simply included “sexual orientation” in its rule. I hope that this incident motivates them to do so.
Not a bit. Someone might say, “Be tolerant of Christians, Hollywood!” I might respond, “Sure, don’t discriminated against them in hiring, but don’t forget the hatred and warfare that Christianity has been responsible for over the last couple millennia.” I am not advocating feeding Christians to the lions, or even advocating discriminating against Christians in hiring practices; I am simply saying that, although Christians have equal rights to atheists, they follow a beknighted and harmful belief system.*
Similarly, this asshole may be saying, “Sure, don’t beat gay people, but don’t forget that they’re practicing a sinful lifestyle and turning away from their savior.” That’s not advocating violence.
I disagree :D. Even if this were the case, you’d be very hard-pressed to argue that the student should have realized this; an unclear rule is no rule at all. And if this were the case, the student’s quoting of a Bible verse that specifically condemns male homosexuals would be forbidden because it is offensive to women, a bizarre outcome. (Remember that YHWH digs lesbians, apparently, given the dearth of Bible verses condemning female homosexuality).
Daniel
I do not, of course, advocate the view in this paragraph; I was struggling to think of a metaphor that wouldn’t offensively compare gay folk to shoplifters or druggies or something, and comparing them to Christians was the best I could do.
No, Shodan, why don’t we continue talking about schools, which is what this thread is about, and which have rules beyond the general society. It is discriminatory and unfair for schools to have rules in place that forbid the incitement of hatred against religions and nationalities and permit it against gay people. Please stop confusing the issue with the rights of people in broader society.
After all, I can chew gum and play a walkman in Skokie, Illinois, too, should I have some burning desire to do so, which I couldn’t have in a high school classroom.
What an interesting question. We don’t know. Similarly, we don’t know whether he said, “Let’s beat up gay people!” I won’t speculate if other people won’t.
My point was precisely that we cannot conclude from his shirt an advocacy of violence.
Has anyone been able to find any independent corroboration of this story, by the way? The only links to it I’ve been able to Google all point back to WND.