Good As You

My response to them:

In the above referenced article you refer to GLSEN and similar groups as "homosexual activists" and "homosexual pressure groups", and described them and their attendees as mocking, loud, mean sad, quiet, confused, discriminatory, intolerant and disrespectful.

Now I do not know the storyteller in this piece, Miss Sparks, and I can only assume her to be a thoughtful person. She is incorrect, however, in equating a resistance to her evangelizing as being discriminatory. An more correct analogy can be made to a situation with atheist activists and Christians. If, as happened in the Soviet Union, an atheistic state forced Christians to give up their chosen beliefs, would Christians be discriminatory or bigoted because they did not agree? No, we would expect them hold out against the discrimination and even actively fight against it. Resistance to an unjust system does not equal intolerance or phobia: it is a reasoned and even noble response to make the world safer and better.

If anyone in this story is part of a pressure group, intolerant, or disrespectful, it is Miss Sparks. Obviously, Miss Sparks was evangelizing, uninvited, at a secular event set up for teenagers who have probably encountered years of discrimination (at best) or abuse (at worst) from their schools, classmates, government, and religions. One is not surprised to think that she might hear some mocking or disparagement, and her tone of martyrdom at such is par for the course in articles such as this. However, if anyone deserves the sympathy of readers it is the students attending this session who had, yet again, to endure smiley-faced false compassion, misplaced pity, and deceptive hope for repairing something that is not broken to begin with. No matter how kind she thinks she was being, and how pleasant her demeanor, her message is meant to make these kids feel not pride, but shame. GLSEN does, and should, discriminate against people who want to make their participants feel they have something to be ashamed of.

Miss Sparks must know that her argument (that she too is being oppressed) is dishonest. She must know that her goal is not to have a Christian place at GLSEN's table but instead to make people not gay. On the contrary, GLSEN's goals have nothing to do with religion, as Christianity is not defined by prejudice against gay people (ask my pastor who's opinion counts just as much as Miss Sparks'). If GLSEN had the explicit goal of turning Christians into atheists, would CWA give full and unfettered access to them?

I think not.

The article states: "[Ms. Sparks] was moved to do her best to present a case for healing to the young people who will never hear such a message from groups like GLSEN."

Yeah right, like these poor gay kids have never heard about the wonders of "praying away the gay" because GLSEN has kept this important information from them. Come on!

These kids know all about her "case for healing" and they apparantly think it's BS. It doesn't take any "homosexual pressure groups" for them to figure that out.