Ignorance and Hypocrisy in Northern Illinois
http://www.beloitdailynews.com
For the record, the city in which this debate is taking place is only a brief drive from my house in Wisconsin to the Illinois side of the border, and as I read the piece I was actually rather surprised by the number of mindless homophobes who would be opposed to having a Gay Straight Alliance as a part of their curriculum.
What does this article tell me? It tells me that this northeastern Illinois, like certain areas of Southeastern Wisconsin, has a huge problem with bigotry and that both the adolescents (please read in a derogatory tone of voice) and the so called "adults" in the picture have a long way to go before they can be accepted as genuine members of the human race.
Some of the comments here are truly amazing (read asinine). "This is no chess club we're putting together here.," said a protohominid from Roscoe. Really? I'm surprised he was erudite enough to tell the difference. And then there's this line of dysfunctional reasoning: "Lora Sue Hauser, a representative from the Illinois Family Institute, cited research that asserts 75 percent of boys who label themselves gay as teens become straight in adulthood. It would be 'educationally irresponsible,' she said, for the school to endorse homosexuality." Frankly I'm getting a little sick and tired of these Manson Family Value Institutes spewing their pseudo science and half baked reasoning as sociological fact. The truth of the matter is that these people are not thinking scientifically. Instead of beginning with a hypothesis and allowing the data to lead them to a conclusion, they begin with a conclusion, stack the data to support their conclusion, and then claim that they engaged in legitimate research as they use their fraudulent research to support their delusional preconceived ideas. sweet pea recently covered the manner in which these people fudge the facts in our series about Right Wing Revision, so I won't repeat that information. I shall merely leave you with a link to SweetPea's excellent article about phony research by the Radical Religious Right.*
But I will add this. In addition to allowing their delusions to get in the way of serious research, I would humbly suggest that these creatures are also allowing their all too hysterical emotions and their fanatical religious views to color, to contaminate their attitudes towards gays and lesbians. Why, you must ask yourself, would it matter one iota as to how a young person identifies himself? Why is the Illinois Family Institute so obsessed with the idea of sexual orientation, indeed with sex in general? Oh Jeez. I don't know. Could it be because the right is dependent on scapegoats to unify their base? Could it be because gays provide a convenient group to persecute, that people on the religious right are so deeply entrenched in hate disguised as religious fervor that the only way they can feel better about themselves is by persecuting those who they consider below them, as somehow subhuman or inferior? Could be. God knows it wouldn't be the first time that religious mania has led to the persecution of the different. Witness the countless crusades, witch hunts, and bloody Inquisitions in which the Christian community has engaged while trying to secure his brother's and sister's place in blissful, Utopian paradise. Granted, we aren't burning people at the stake or torturing them on the rack or in the iron maiden, but the mindset is clearly there, and whether we like it or not, there is a great deal more straight (Christian?) violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals than there is gay on straight (Christian?) violence.
So again, the question must be asked? Just who does it hurt if students want to form a gay-straight alliance? What exactly are these religious loonies afraid of? The possibility that clear-thinking individuals will find a common basis for peaceful coexistence? The frightening possibility that people will discover that they aren't so different from one another after all? A peaceful, tolerant, and accepting society in which trivial matters such as race and sexual orientation have no bearing on whether one is a loving and caring individual? No. We wouldn't to do that. W wouldn't want to do anything that contradicts the violent, hateful, perverted, and self contradicting sections of the Holy Bible, and we certainly wouldn't want to make life a little easier and more pleasant for those who are not like us.
In closing I would offer the following suggestion. I find it interesting that student led groups are allowed to use tax payer dollars to pray around flag poles and to create religious after school programs. In other words, when something violates the Constitution of the United States and creates a little religious fiefdom within your local school district, the far right has no trouble when it comes to both, spending the tax dollars of the dissident to shove their moronic belief systems down our throats. But when those who differ want the same right to form organizations and to express themselves then the Christian Neanderthals will lumber out of their caves to beat back anyone and everyone who disagrees with them. Well, they can't have it both ways If religious groups can violate the constitution and use the public school to indoctrinate school children with their asinine ideas, then gays and lesbians should be allowed the same right to express the truth and to set the record straight. On the other hand, if gays and lesbians can be banned from forming gay-straight alliances based on some psychotic reading of the so called holy text, then the low brow Neanderthals and their subhuman religious delusions should also be banned.
In other words, I have just about had it with these people, and I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't time to drive them back into the dark, dank cave of ignorance and superstition from which they lumbered.
*See
http://coalitionforademocractic
No comments:
Post a Comment