“Enraged” would be too mild of an adjective to describe the caller in Spectrum magazine, the national award-winning student magazine for permanent residents of two rural counties in northeastern Pennsylvania.
“Take my wife from this circulation list. I don't know how she ever got along! ”He asked.
My business manager, a junior, asked what had happened, thinking that she could defuse her anger - or at least find out what was bothering him.
“We don’t believe in an alternative lifestyle and don’t want to be associated with it!” He screamed angrily and again demanded to be dropped from our list. He did not want to talk with the circulation manager or the editor; he didn't even want to tell us what pissed him off. He just did not want his wife to get a magazine.
The business manager politely thanked him for the call, took his wife's name from the list of subscribers and came to me. My office is located next to the office of the Spectrum. I teach journalism at the University of Bloomsburg and serve as the chief editor / adviser of the Spectrum.
Together, we quickly went through a 20-story index — shorts, features, detailed investigation reports — trying to figure out what was in our recent problem to cause such outrage. After a couple of minutes of quick shooting, we finally established a connection. The current problem was widespread during the week after the Day of Silence. The only connection is our name; in high school, Danville, the only one of the seven high schools in our circuit, to officially support Day of Silence, the sponsoring club, with both homosexual and direct students, was also known as Spectrum.
The Day of Silence began in 1996 with 150 students at the University of Virginia. Ten years later, about 500,000 students from 4,000 schools participated in a silent day to send a “loud message from America and # 39; s students that we need to work to provide safe and effective schools for every child, ”according to Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Direct Educational Programs Network (GLSEN), which works with the United States Students Association in an annual event. Last year, the Alliance Defense Fund initiated the Day of Truth to “resist the propaganda of the homosexual agenda and express an opposition perspective from a Christian perspective.” This year, about 2,800 students participated, reports ADF.
At two meetings of the Danville County School Board, parents protested against the upcoming Day of Silence. They complained that the students would not say anything during one of the 180 school days appointed that would disrupt the entire educational process, apparently not realizing that education can also occur while reading, watching and listening to others. “Why are the rights of a major controlled by a few?” Asked one of the parents, who has a good impression of a person who may have coped poorly with basic civilian skills when he was in high school. They also complained that the gay lifestyle contributes to mortal sin; The Bible, they say, said the same. Donald Lee Fox, a 30-year-old conservative, gave a passionate speech quoting a biblical text and called homosexuality an "abomination." It was the same Donald Lee Fox, who was once convicted of an aggravating indecent assault on a 15-year-old girl, was sent to prison for a term of three to ten months, was on parole for four years and had to register as Megan and # 39; offender. Similarly, being gay is a greater sin than sexual abuse.
Sunbury Daily, Danville News and Bloomsburg Press Enterprise, which are distributed in Danville, publish dispute articles; each of them has launched several signed letters to the editor. But it is in “30 Seconds” that the mood of the community is revealed. Every day, dozens of residents who listen to radio talk shows, but who probably cannot walk past the country road, make a phone call or write emails to a politically conservative anti-union press enterprise; Every day, a newspaper with a circulation of 21,000 units is published from half-page up to two full pages of these short, usually anonymous, fragments, some of which are processed from the Internet or based on the fact that they have been heard on talk shows; many comments contain at least one spelling or grammatical error; many of them contain derogatory phrases.
One woman talked about an “exciting lifestyle,” while others talked about “wanderers” and “lesbos.” Five weeks before the Day of Silence, one of the resident residents called in “30 seconds” said: “What scares me is people with distorted minds who teach our children that this behavior is in order.” The other was “thrilled to see the sodomized lesbians and transgender agreed to just shut up for one day ... Think that all perverts and those who support their offensive lifestyle at the national level should just shut up for one day. What a blessing. “One person who claims to be a“ stubborn student ”said:“ I do not discriminate, but the rights of homosexuals should not push my throat. ” Several people called the newspaper flip-comments, wanting days of silence for a variety of people, including divorced, young pregnant girls and bald men. Danville County School Council was attacked to defend the “whims of the sick and corrupted liberal minority.” Some residents believed that the Day of Silence was non-American, not realizing that the First Amendment also protected the right not to speak, as well as the right to speak. Even the editor of the newspaper became involved when he claimed that the Day of Silence "was not a student event [but] was organized and promoted across the country by adults, ”not so discriminatory that several unfaithful adults manipulated half a million adolescents.
“What happened to the day of silence to return the prayer to the schools?” One of the 30 seconds writers asked. During the “Day of Silence” controversy, the United Church of Christ gathered at the foot of Danville and became an independent church because the UCC General Synod approved same-sex marriages. However, many local ministers also support their support for promoting tolerance — a couple of Protestant ministers even stated that people quoting the Bible to support opposition to homosexuality may misinterpret the Scriptures or take the words out of context. But their voice was strangled with a blanket.
On this day of silence, the Press Press reported that there were 113 letters, calls and e-mails, two thirds criticizing “the relevance of such a protest at school, condemning homosexuality or attacking the Spectrum”.
On April 26, according to the school district, between 25 and 30 percent of students (208-250 students) did not go to class. Regular absenteeism is about five percent. Perhaps many have stayed at home in protest of what they and their parents considered to be the absolute truth that homosexuality is a sin; sometimes many who do not answer questions in the classroom on any other day thought that they would be identified as gay if they appeared in the classroom; sometimes they just figured out how to get a day off from school.
“It was a waste of the school day,” said one of the 30 Seconds subscribers, who believed that “the teachers began to sit at their desks in silence and do nothing.” One of the slanderous readers, a few days after the peaceful event, called to declare: “If anyone thinks that gay fighters will not resort to any means necessary to achieve their selfish goals, take the time to investigate their barbaric, shameful Nazi storm shooter tactics and intimidation ... ”But one woman called for praising Spectrum students for their“ example of dignity, intelligence and restraint in the face of the rank of fanaticism. ”
We do not know whether our caller from Danville retired to the Spectrum magazine before he showed him to his wife that he obviously defended himself from what he knew was evil. We know that pilgrims fled from England because of intolerance, created equally intolerant societies and that subsequent generations mistakenly misunderstood and misused the Bible and the message of their Christ to spoil religious houses with racial, religious and social biases and lies. Unfortunately, intolerance is as much a part of our nation as our modernity. Perhaps students from the Spectrum give hope for our future.
[Walter Brasch's latest books are 'Unacceptable': The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina and America's Unpatriotic Acts, a look at the use of the USA PATRIOT Act to suppress civil liberties and of the suppression of the rights of dissent. You may contact Dr. Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website at www.walterbrasch.com ]
