McGuffey High School in Claysville, Pennsylvania made headlines over the weekend when a group of students organized an “Anti-Gay Day’ in direct retaliation to the LGBT youth-supportive National Day of Silence (NDOS) on Friday.
So it’s necessary to “retaliate” against the LGBT youth-supportive National Day of Silence? So a group of high school students want to go on record as saying LGBT youth should be bullied and harassed at school?
GLSENs Day of Silence is a national day of action in which students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools.
History
Founded in 1996, the Day of Silence has become the largest single student-led action towards creating safer schools for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. From the first-ever Day of Silence at the University of Virginia in 1996, to the organizing efforts in over 8,000 middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities across the country in 2008, its textured history reflects its diversity in both numbers and reach.
Back to McGuffey High School:
A student named Ashley, wrote to G Philly saying that organizers of the anti-gay movement asked students to wear flannel shirts and write “anti-gay” on their hands if they opposed the LGBT community. “Stickers and flyers are also being placed around the school and on queer kids’ lockers that read ‘ANTI-GAY,’ she wrote. “This movement is a retaliation of the Day Of Silence that was set in place to remember people whose lives have ended due to LQBTIA bullying. The ‘Anti-Gay’ club, to begin with, is an obvious sign of bullying and discrimination. These kids need help. We are all people and we all deserve to be treated as such. ”
I wonder if the school also has a Racist Club, a Misogynist Club, a Nazi Club, a KKK Club, a Rapists Club, a Bullies Club.
WPXI suggests that Anti-Gay Day organizers expect to continue its protest through the week, with organizers choosing a different shirt color each day. Thursday it was flannel, Friday they wore orange and they “allegedly have another five days’ worth of anti-gay attire planned for [this] week.”
There’s just nothing so inspirational as organized bullying, is there.
The fucking entitlement. That a day of deliberate silence in support and remembrance is being used in order to speak over and intimidate queer victims of abuse. We’re not even fucking allowed to be quiet on our own terms.
Yes. They all meet at the same time, in the same place.
This might be a naive or stupid question but: why is this being allowed? I mean, land of the free and home of the brave and first amendment right to free speech and all that, but just how far would these kids get if they started sticking swastikas on Jewish kids’ lockers? Why are they not all just being ordered home to change and detained for counselling?
I don’t know. Schools don’t have to permit bullying as “free speech” so I don’t know. Maybe the administration agrees with them.
@2 moarscienceplz: And I’ll bet they open their meetings with prayer.
Yeah, it’s called football.
Ba-dum-tish! I’ll be here all week,
There’s a couple of problems for the administration here. It’s basically impossible to punish kids for wearing a shirt they would be allowed to wear any other day.
The locker stickers, hand thing etc., you have to catch kids in the act. It’s not easy to do.
I’ll be interested to see if they come up with a good strategy to fight this. But the kids organizing this are no doubt practiced bullies.
There ought to be a parallel to Lewis’ Law, something along the lines of: “The response to an event protesting the bullying of LGBT individuals and the LGBT community justify the need to protest the bullying.”
Me too, but I fear OB may be right at 4, and the administration is maybe not assiduously devising such a strategy.
Bullying is not free speech. Bullying is silencing people – it is a violation of free speech. It may be a constitutional right to be anti-gay, but one must be careful how to express it.