This was a response to some rightwing watercarrier who was complaining about students being allowed to participate in a “Day of Silence” as a protest against the bullying and harrassment of gay students. I just really enjoyed reading it and thought you guys might like to read it too.

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Silence is Propaganda!

“I like that. They were “allegedly” harassed. Because if you admit what anyone who has spent any time in a high school in, oh, the last 50 years, knows - that harassment of anyone perceived to be gay, much less those actually gay, is extraordinarily common in secondary schools - then they might have to recognize that there is a legitimate reason for the Day of Silence and that it has to do with raising awareness of harassment and bullying, not with trying to turn people gay.

Though I do not support special rights for homosexuals, I do believe the concept of silence in our schools concerning the subject of homosexuality is appropriate. In fact, I feel there should be silence 365 days a year–when it comes to the discussion of how individuals have sex. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if school children were not bombarded with propaganda from special interest groups, like GLSEN, which promote unhealthy and, some times, deadly lifestyles.

See, there’s that problem that the anti-gay right has: mention gay people and the only thing they can think about is sex. The Day of Silence has nothing to do with how anyone has sex; it has to do with how people like Zanoza treat people based solely on with whom they have sex (or at least to whom they are sexually attracted). It has to do with people being mistreated, discriminated against, dehumanized and often beaten and abused, and all because a group of bronze age nomads claimed that their god didn’t like people like that.

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“And there’s a simple reason why Zanoza and those like him are in such a full freakout mode over things like this - because deep inside they know that they’ve already lost. Survey after survey shows it and they know it. Young people today simply don’t carry around the bigotry of their parents and grandparents. They grew up in a culture where it’s increasingly okay to be an openly gay person. They know gay people. They’ve made friends with them. And they know they’re no different from the rest of us.

The same thing happened on our previous racial divides. In the wake of the movement to integrate the schools, young people actually got to know people of other races and they became friends with them. And once they got to know them as something more than Rorschach tests upon which to project their insecurities, they understood that racial divisions were artificial. Kids just aren’t bigoted by nature; bigotry has to be taught. When you’re in the sandbox, all that matters is that you’ve got a pail and the other kid has a shovel and together you can build something; what color the other kid just doesn’t matter.

That same dynamic is now going on with respect to sexual orientation. Gay people have always been around us, but in previous generations we didn’t know they were gay because it was so unsafe to be open about it. But now that’s changing and when someone finds out that someone they already know and like is gay, they go from being that abstraction onto which one can project their fears to being real people, with real fears, real dreams, real problems - just like us. And bigotry fades.

You can deny it all you want, Daniel, but deep down you know it; you’ve lost. It’s all over but the shouting. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, the anti-gay insurgency is in its last throes (and this time, it happens to be true). That’s why they’re reacting with such zealous fervor, because the ideological hegemony their bigotry once enjoyed is on the way out. Once again, the promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are being extended where they were previously denied. And there’s nothing they can do to stop it.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 12:58 am and is filed under Gay News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.