Students protest public school’s Day of Silence with “Gay is not OK” T-Shirts
Ian Parker, KATU News Oregon City, Oregon, reports, “Students wearing anti-gay T-shirts to class disrupted Oregon City High School’s celebration of unity Friday. Friday was National Day of Silence. It’s where students take some form of silence to call attention to the bullying of the LGBT community in schools. Two students told KATU News that if the school is supporting Day of Silence, then they have the right to speak out against it.”
They wore T-shirts to school that said, “Gay Is Not Ok” and “Gay Day Is Not OK,” which is a reference to Day of Silence. They sought out a KATU reporter to be interviewed.
Dr. Judith Reisman has decried the Day of Silence as a direct assault “on traditional parental, American values.” Dr. Reisman in her column How teachers’ “attitude restructuring” is hypersexualizing your kids notes:
The whole purpose of these “sex positive” programs is not to liberate adults from their Victorian moral prisons but to indoctrinate children into an unrestrained, sexually available lifestyle. Even if such “programs” are not being taught in all schools yet, this material has been made available on multiple websites and are widely promoted to all, regardless of age. The Kinsey Institute, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, AASECT and others all provide, or recommend, sites that extoll the virtues of unrestrained sexual experimentation.
Is it any wonder that youthful STDs, pregnancies, abortions and abuse are pandemic?
Which brings us to one of the big lies spread by these organizations: safe/safer sex.
“I’m not comfortable with you guys making a whole day about what you believe,” said Alex Borho, a senior. “So if you’re going to make a whole day out of it and not talk and a have a ‘moment of silence,’ then I can wear my T-shirt.” They claim they’ve received a lot of support from other students at Oregon City High, but most of the students KATU spoke to said it’s the shirts that are “not okay.”
So, freedom of speech is not OK? Watch this KATU video news report:
According to Wikipedia:
In 2005, the Alliance Defense Fund began sponsoring a yearly counter-protest called the Day of Truth.”Events like these actually end up promoting homosexuality in public schools, and that actually creates a hostile climate for students of faith,” said Candi Cushman, an education analyst for Focus on the Family. A card carried by participants in the Day of Truth reads: “true tolerance means that people with differing—even opposing—viewpoints can freely exchange ideas and respectfully listen to each other. It’s time for an honest conversation about homosexuality. There’s freedom to change if you want to. Let’s talk.”
Other socially conservative organizations, including the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Mission America, Traditional Values Coalition, Americans for Truth, and Liberty Counsel, opposed the Day of Silence in 2008 by forming a coalition urging parents to keep their kids home on the DOS if students at their school were observing it. The Rev. Ken Hutcherson, the principal supporter of those who skipped school, said, “We want education, not indoctrination.”
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In April 2010, in opposition to the Day of Silence, several students in Laingsburg High School in Laingsburg, Michigan wore t-shirts stating “Straight Pride” on the front side and bore a reference to Leviticus 20:13 on the back. That Bible verse refers to homosexual behavior as an abomination and prescribes death as the penalty for it. The same protest, which was organized on a Facebook group, also took place in the St. Johns and Bath school districts.
On October 6, 2010, CNN reported that Exodus International, which promotes “freedom from homosexuality through Jesus Christ”, would not support the 2011 annual Day of Truth as the organization had done in 2010. President Alan Chambers stated, “All the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace while treating their neighbors as they’d like to be treated, whether they agree with them or not.”
In 2011, Focus on the Family acquired the “Day of Truth” event and renamed it into the “Day of Dialogue”. As of 2012, the Day of Dialogue website stated: “Now it boasts a new name, while maintaining the same goal it’s always had since its founding — encouraging honest and respectful conversation among students about God’s design for sexuality.”
EDITORS NOTE: The feature image is courtesy of KATU News.
