Day of Silence Protested by Illinois Family Institute

April 17th had been a Day of Silence, a student-led protest to draw attention to the harassment of the LGBT community.

The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take some form of a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior. The event is designed to illustrate the silencing effect of this bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT.

Several Christian groups are protesting the event, most vocally the Illinois Family Institute, who are encouraging parents to keep their kids home from school on the 17th. They posted a list (pdf) of why Christians should not participate in the event. First, they claim that the event “politicizes the classroom for ideological purposes,” and that this violates, somehow, separation of church and state clauses, which I suppose they interpret as “separation of church and personal morality.” They insist again and again that the Day of Silence interrupts the school day, taking time and attention away from instruction and focusing it instead on a political issue. I will put aside the fact that I completely disagree with their assertion that Day of Silence is politicizing (this is about ending violence and harassment, not about allowing gay marriage), but assuming that it is a politically charged event, which is more disruptive to a child’s learning process: having them witness a few silent students engaging in a peaceful form of protest while still attending class, or pulling them out altogether?

Another reason they say that the classroom should not be “politicized” is because “DOS participants have a captive audience, many of whom disagree with and are made uncomfortable by the politicization of their classroom.” Ugh. Oh no. We might make some people uncomfortable. Those kids who harass and bully gay students or use derogatory slang words for “homosexual” as hate speech are going to feel exceptionally uncomfortable, and we don’t want to hurt their feelings, right? They are obviously referring to Christian students who disagree with the premise that homosexuality is a acceptable lifestyle, but I fail to see how an even that seeks to end harassment would affect those students. Regardless of how they view the morality of homosexuality, everyone, including Christians, should agree that there is no excuse for bullying and name-calling.

The second paragraph of their publication reads: “The explicit purpose of DOS is to encourage sympathy and support for students involved in homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors whose voices have been allegedly silenced by the disapproval of society. The implicit purpose is to undermine the belief that homosexuality and cross-dressing is immoral. Parents should no longer passively countenance the political usurpation of public school classrooms through student silence.” It is disturbing the way they assert that the LGBT community have only been “allegedly silenced,” and yet they are actively worked to silence this demonstration, isn’t it?

They go on to claim that a fundamental problem with Day of Silence is how the organizers define “safety” and “discrimination.” The write that “the problematic rhetoric of ’safety’… substitutes speciously for the more accurate term of ‘comfort.’ To suggest that in order for those who self-identify as homosexual or ‘transgender’ to be ’safe,’ no one may disapprove of homosexual conduct is both absurd and dangerous.” Right. This is all about comfort. This isn’t about Matthew Shepard. This isn’t about Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover either, an 11 year-old boy who hanged himself on April 9th of this year after enduring anti-gay bullying, despite the fact that he did not self-identify as gay. To suggest that this is a matter of nothing more than personal “comfort” ignores the terrible deaths of the many victims of anti-LGBT harassment, and glosses over the violence faced by those in the LGBT community, treating it as if it is non-existent. According to GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), “Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2%) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1%) reported being physically harassed and about a quarter (22.1%) reported being physically assaulted, according to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.” Regardless of how the IFI wants to spin this, anti-gay harassment is a serious problem.

On the topic of tolerance, the IFI writes, “Day of Silence participants claim they seek to end discrimination. There is, however, a problem with the way ‘discrimination’ is defined in public discourse today. Groups like GLSEN believe that statements of moral conviction with which they disagree constitute prejudice or discrimination.” This is not about agreeing or disagreeing. This is about ending the physical and mental abuse inflicted on GLBT students. If a group of people frequently suffer harassment and attacks, that is discrimination. You can disagree with them all you want, just as long as the disagreement doesn’t take the form of derogatory slurs and physical violence, as it so often does.

They continue, “While relentlessly promoting this view [that GLBT students should not be discriminated against], administrators are never asked to provide evidence for the dubious presuppositions on which claims of discrimination are based. They are never asked to provide evidence for the arguable claim that homosexuality is equivalent to race; or that disapproval of homosexual conduct is equivalent to racism; or that homosexual impulses are biologically determined; or that the presence of biological influences in shaping desire renders a behavior automatically moral. The time is long past that parents demand justification for those claims.”

So discrimination only counts if it is regarding something biological? Several studies and lines of research have already proven the evidence they are asking for. But then again, even if that evidence wasn’t there, even if homosexuality was a personal choice and nothing else, should they still endure discrimination? It might not be perfectly appropriate to compare anti-gay discrimination to racism if it is indeed an issue of choice, but since when it is alright to discriminate against a group based on their personal convictions? Surely Christians would say that it is not okay to discriminate against them just because their biology did not determine their Christianity.

Just in case you weren’t completely sure by now what the IFI stands for and how they feel about anti-GLBT harassment and bullying, they’ve put together a lovely little video to demonstrate their opinions. In the video, a Christian child goes to school on April 17th and, against his will, has a piece of duct tape slapped over his mouth by his dominatrix-like teacher, forcing him to comply with the Day of Silence. The students of his class are then forced to give “Presentations on Tolerance,” where they hold up posters that read, “Make the world a safe place for gay people.” The narrator says that homosexuals only “claim to be a victim” as part of their master-engineered “homosexual agenda” that seeks to normalize the reprehensible behavior. He then quotes from a “gay marketing firm,” obviously the geniuses behind the homosexual agenda, that suggest to increase tolerance by creating homosexual TV characters who are “the best dresses, the person who offers the best advice, never the drunk or the scoundrel.” The narrator claims that the portrayal of homosexuals on TV is a “glossy veneer” hiding the real truth that homosexuals are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, accept abusive relationships, and commit suicide. Huh. Interesting. I wonder why homosexuals are so miserable and depressed? Could it be because of bigots like the ITI, who seek to institutionalize discrimination against them? Then they make a giant logical fallacy (the argument from antiquity, to be exact), claiming that some old traditions (i.e. “traditional” marriage) have remained “because they are right.” At the end of the video all of the Christian students band together and rip their posters from the tolerance presentations, tearing up the words “Make the world a safe place for gay people.” A very telling vignette.

Rather than positioning themselves in oppostion to love, peace, tolerance, and acceptance (the values taught by Christ), the Chrisitan community should be embracing this event, encouraging their children to take part. They should truly follow in the footsteps of Christ by taking a stand against violence and harassment in all its forms, regadlress of the target of abuse.

Tags: Christianity, civil rights, day of silence, GLBT