Dan Savage

[Timminz]

What does he know anyway. he's a fuckin' queeeer!

His points aren't worth noting because he's a FUCKIN: QUEEEEER!

Bible thumping asshole might have oppressed him for his whole life, but that's okay cause QWueeeers don't deserve no human rights...

[Maugena]

......and then provided 9 more examples after homophobia of why the Bible is bullshit, but of course that was not meant to imply the Bible is full of shit. Your description does not exactly square with his comment about how "The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document..." either. He was trashing Christians, LOUD and clear.

#1. The examples are there to help persuade them to REASON. If you don't follow the things that are goofy, why should you think demonizing homosexuals is okay? The examples are there to STRICTLY promote the point. If he was calling out Christianity as a whole, he would've said: "We ignore bullshit in The Bible about everything," instead of actually saying, "We ignore bullshit in The Bible about all sorts of things." All sorts of things implies that there are a multitude of things that are or may be wrong, but it does not by any means declare the Bible itself to be wrong.
#2. I don't read the Bible because I personally think that most of it is trash. In any case, if you're claiming that the Bible isn't pro-slavery, please refute that with posting all pro-slavery and anti-slavery parts of the Bible in this thread and we'll come to a conclusion then.

As for how I see it, a homosexual as yelling at the top of his lungs to a bunch of children about how the Bible is wrong about what is says about homosexuality. His examples do not even come close to backing up that point, but that's just more context.

One thing Savage does know, is that he is trying to promote his beliefs onto vulnerable children in a high school.

You're delusional and irrational. His examples are actually extremely relevant to the topic and reinforce why one should not follow the 'teachings of Leviticus'.
One thing I will agree with is that he should probably have not gotten as emotional as he did about it, however, that does not change the fact that the message of this particular part was about not being anti-gay.
I think you'd find yourself hard-pressed to find a student that disagreed with any of the examples that he had given-the ones that he had said were bullshit.

I'm not homosexual, personally, and up until recently, having made friends with a gay guy, working with a gay guy and going out with a girl whose best friend was gay, I was also an opinionated asshole for no reason regarding the subject. However, my grounds were utterly more justifiable (I no longer care what sexual orientation you prefer and now believe that you should be happy at the expense of no-one). Your 'reasons' are some bullshit emotional bible-thumping.

Perhaps it's unfortunate, perhaps it's for the best, but you're once again closer to being FOE'd by me. From spewing political garbage to skewing someone's message, I've just about had enough.

[Phatscotty]

One thing I will agree with is that he should probably have not gotten as emotional as he did about it....

You mean he should not have turned into a bully

[Army of GOD]

If I had a belief that I was allowed to kill any white males over the age of 20 (and I was exceedingly skilled at it), would it be bullying if you told me my belief was stupid?

[Phatscotty]

If I had a belief that I was allowed to kill any white males over the age of 20 (and I was exceedingly skilled at it), would it be bullying if you told me my belief was stupid?

I don't care what your belief is, if you start yelling it at a bunch of kids in a school and add some expletives and starts calling children names, I will make a thread about you too!

[jak111]

Phatscotty: Why are you ignoring the obvious?

*BECAUSE IT PROMOTES HATRED AGAINST THOSE THAT ARE HOMOSEXUAL. DONE.

He can't face when he's in the wrong, as simple as that. Also because his family are probably former KKK members. I'm serious, with the way he replies to everyone acting like we're the ignorant ones here. There's a post someone made a page back that gives the speech WORD FOR WORD. I agree with what he said toward the end, the people who walked out were pansy's. They were against homosexuals which really, is disgusting that they can't move on from that hatred toward someones sexuality. What? Does two guys in a room having sex gross you out scotty?

The kid who replied to the news saying they thought it was going to be an anti bullying rally. It was, he just didn't like which end of the stick he knew he was on.

For some reason I find the christians that voice the most out about their religion either knows very little or have very biased opinions. I have a question, did they teach you about other religions in sunday school? Of course not, they wish to force their beliefs on "Vulnerable children". Stop being a hypocrite. If people are allowed to send their children to a school that forces their beliefs on them then this is by no means even close to it.

Fasposted x3.

Yet patches. You're full of hate yourself, if you can throw accusations at people so willingly. Stop being a hypocrite.

As for Tim. Two guys going at it all night long bud, does that make you sick? I hope so because you're being ignorant to other people, unless they're hitting on you, you don't need to care what others sexualities are.

Fastposted x2.

Agree with Maugena. His point is all that really matters, and he stated legit facts whether you can face it or not.

scotty, right now you're being a bully to anyone who isn't a christian. You belittled Communists earlier, and you continue to spew out crap like your some sort of saint.

Fastposted x2.

Once again, you miss the point scotty. christians brainwash kids all the time at their sunday and private schools.

[Phatscotty]

Or....more likely....this is about Dan Savage....and not Phatscotty?

Attack me all you want, doesn't change anything about the subject matter.

What the Communists have done in the 20th century is a fact. You have just destroyed your credibility by opining that me stating a fact is "belittling" anything. wtg

The truth shall set you free

[Army of GOD]

If I had a belief that I was allowed to kill any white males over the age of 20 (and I was exceedingly skilled at it), would it be bullying if you told me my belief was stupid?

I don't care what your belief is, if you start yelling it at a bunch of kids in a school and add some expletives and starts calling children names, I will make a thread about you too!

ok, just so we got that cleared up

[jak111]

Or....more likely....this is about Dan Savage....and not Phatscotty?

Attack me all you want, doesn't change anything about the subject matter.

What the Communists have done in the 20th century is a fact. You have just destroyed your credibility by opining that me stating a fact is "belittling" anything. wtg

The truth shall set you free

You belittle them by pointing them out out of everything like they're 100% wrong. Instead of defending what was said you result to trying to focus the attention on something completely different, trying to compare religion to Communism just because you can't defend the fact that religion has killed MILLIONS of people world wide, perhaps billions (Over the years).

Don't go pointing your fingers at something else because you can't defend what you believe in.

[Phatscotty]

Or....more likely....this is about Dan Savage....and not Phatscotty?

Attack me all you want, doesn't change anything about the subject matter.

What the Communists have done in the 20th century is a fact. You have just destroyed your credibility by opining that me stating a fact is "belittling" anything. wtg

The truth shall set you free

You belittle them by pointing them out out of everything like they're 100% wrong. Instead of defending what was said you result to trying to focus the attention on something completely different, trying to compare religion to Communism just because you can't defend the fact that religion has killed MILLIONS of people world wide, perhaps billions (Over the years).

Don't go pointing your fingers at something else because you can't defend what you believe in.

It was not even a comparison. I straight one upped him in "maiming and killing-dom."
20th century Communism wiped out at least 70 million people, possibly 100 million. Not sure what you think the earth population was in 433 A.D., or 1089 A.D., or even 1515 A.D. The numbers aren't there for all religion combined since the beginning of time to even challenge 20th century Communism. Add up all death from all Crusades, you won't even come close to a million, and even if you did, it's not even close to enough.

Why you are so blindly defending it, and just throwing numbers out like "religion killed 1 billion people" is pretty shallow.

[Maugena]

One thing I will agree with is that he should probably have not gotten as emotional as he did about it....

You mean he should not have turned into a bully

He didn't turn into a bully.
He was very passionate about refuting a particular Christian belief that causes a minority great emotional pain and perhaps even physical if persecuted.
Stop wearing those sunglasses at night.

[Army of GOD]

It's funny how this thread is made, but if, let's say, someone is murdered over their sexuality, Scotty doesn't make this thread.

[jak111]

It's funny how this thread is made, but if, let's say, someone is murdered over their sexuality, Scotty doesn't make this thread.

+1

Also scotty, religion and politics go hand and hand, your thinking only in past wars, there are wars going on now that are revolved around religion. Let me dig out a song that probably sums up the easiest peace possible.

[Frigidus]

Soooo...a few questions.

Is pointing out the things that the Bible got wrong now equivalent to bullying Christians? Considering the Bible is far and away the leading cause of homophobia, shouldn't pointing out that a literal reading of every passage in the Bible leads to stupid opinions be a good way of leading people to a less backwards opinion? Is telling people what is in the book they consider a holy document seriously an attack on them? Was Savage lying? What word other than "bullshit" should have been used to describe the Bible's passages on shellfish and slavery, passages so stupid the church themselves have basically declared them non-canon (so much for the Bible being a flawless document)? In what way is it OK for a non-believer to frame criticisms of the Bible that would not be considered bullying?

[Symmetry]

Even among the virulently anti-gay American bishops, Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt stands out. More than perhaps any other prelate in the country (with possible competition from New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan), Nienstedt has turned the fight against marriage equality into an all-out crusade. He's inserted a prayer for marriage discrimination into the Catholic Mass; turned that church's holiest sacrament into a weapon against LGBT people; ordered his priests to organize grassroots political committees in their parishes -- at parish expense -- for the express purpose of drumming up support for Minnesota's proposed constitutional marriage discrimination amendment; and essentially told those same priests that if they opposed the Minnesota Catholic Church's war on LGBT people, couples, and families, they had darn well better keep their traps shut about it. (And incidentally, Nienstedt's spiritual bullying was recently endorsed by none other than the Pope himself.)

With so many malicious anti-gay attacks to his credit, one could be readily forgiven for overlooking another one that I mentioned only briefly in a previous post: "Nienstedt also spoke about sending teams consisting of 'a priest and a married couple' into Catholic schools to discuss marriage discrimination with schoolchildren." That's right: Nienstedt planned to send teams of adults into Catholic schools to teach children that, if the Minnesota Catholic Church has its way in November, only some of them will be worthy of marriage when they grow up.

Awful, no? Well now, thanks to Jon Tevlin of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we know that these mandatory marriage discrimination lectures are indeed taking place at Catholic schools across the archdiocese. But in at least some of those schools, students are very unhappy about being forcibly subjected to such a decidedly un-Christian message. Tevlin interviewed Matt Bliss, a senior at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis, about what happened at his school's assembly:

"The first three-quarters of the presentation were really good," said Bliss. "They talked about what is marriage and how marriage helps us as a society. Then it started going downhill when they started talking about single parents and adopted kids. They didn't directly say it, but they implied that kids who are adopted or live with single parents are less than kids with two parents of the opposite sex. They implied that a 'normal' family is the best family."

"When they finally got to gay marriage, [students] were really upset," said Bliss. "You could look around the room and feel the anger. My friend who is a lesbian started crying, and people were crying in the bathroom."
I don't know about you, but reading stories like this makes my blood boil. But check out what happened next:

Bliss was one of several students who stood up to argue with the representatives from the archdiocese. One girl held up a sign that said, "I love my moms."

Mike O'Keefe, a spokesman for the school, said that other students were mad that some of the students spoke out and thought that some of them were "rude" to the visitors from the archdiocese.

"We weren't being rude," countered Lydia Hannah, another student who spoke out. "But people were upset, and we weren't just going to sit there."
The students had ample reason to be angry. According to Hannah, she and her fellow DeLaSalle students were suspicious when they found out that only current seniors would be required to sit through the marriage lecture. She said, "We put two and two together -- all of us will be able to vote next fall [on the constitutional amendment that limits marriage to same-sex couples]." These suspicions were confirmed when the presenters directly addressed the proposed amendment, albeit briefly due to the angry reaction it elicited from the students.

The priest-couple team didn't stop there, though. Bliss told Tevlin that when someone in the audience stated that two men, for example, were perfectly capable of enjoying a loving, committed, stable relationship, the diocesan couple onstage equated that loving same-sex relationship with bestiality. Hannah was shocked by these comments, and she was equally shocked to hear one of the presenters characterize adopted children as "sociologically unstable." Hannah herself is adopted.

Bliss eventually decided he'd had enough:

At one point, Bliss raised his hand and, "as politely as I could," began to argue with the presenters. He used his knowledge of history to refute many of their points, and explained that various cultures have accepted and embraced homosexuality going back hundreds of years.

"I think they were surprised by the history I gave them and surprised that I was so calm," said Bliss. "I don't think they expected the response they got from the students."
Since the diocesan priest and DeLaSalle administration officials abruptly ended the assembly after it became clear that the students weren't exactly drinking the punch, Bliss' assessment appears to be accurate. Angry students were allowed to stay afterward and continue the discussion with archdiocesan officials, which resulted in a more civil atmosphere, at least temporarily. However, Tevlin wrote that "the more questions the presenters tried to answer, the worse it got."

And it didn't end well. Said Bliss, "It was a really awful ending. It was anger, anger, anger, and then we were done and they left. This is really a bad idea."

Predictably -- as you probably deduced from the above comment by school spokesman Mike O'Keefe -- the school appears to be relatively unconcerned about the lesbian student reduced to tears after being told her sexual orientation renders her unfit to love in a meaningful way, the traumatized teens crying in the restroom after hearing their LGBT friends slandered and humiliated, the adopted children accused of having mental problems, the boy calmly refuting anti-gay lies with historical facts, or the girl bravely standing up for her moms even as she's forced to hear them belittled in a public forum. No, the school thinks they were being a nuisance, being rude.

I beg to differ. Far from being rude, these kids are standing up for justice and equality. They are speaking truth to power, even when that means challenging the teachings of the very church that many of them presumably have spent their whole lives in. I wouldn't call that rudeness. I'd call it courage.

Minnesota Catholic Students Angry About Mandatory Anti-Gay Lecture

Just putting this here so Scotty can create a thread about it too.

[jak111]

+1 to the last two posts.

[army of nobunaga]

The speaker went on an anti christian tirade and called those who walked out "pansy assed" among other things. Yeah, bullies like to call people names like that.

It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy-assed people react when you push back

So the anti bullying advocate's plan to combat bullying is to bully back. Genius!

LMAO. He's a tool.

You have never seen a real bully then. Usually a real bully just doesn't say names. The guy is a tool.. but a bully? No.. he is a pansy ass. Sticks and stones and audiences that still watch a tool are tools... and all of that.

[Phatscotty]

Say whatever you want. There is a way to go about dealing with the problem, and there is a way not to go about it.

It's a tragedy that gay kids get beat up and bullied and can be driven to commit suicide because of the pressure other kids and other people can place on them.

My new favorite charity is the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Check it out

http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/a ... index.html

The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.

We believe that such an atmosphere engenders a positive sense of self, which is the basis of educational achievement and personal growth. Since homophobia and heterosexism undermine a healthy school climate, we work to educate teachers, students and the public at large about the damaging effects these forces have on youth and adults alike. We recognize that forces such as racism and sexism have similarly adverse impacts on communities and we support schools in seeking to redress all such inequities.

GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes in creating a more vibrant and diverse community. We welcome any and all individuals as members, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or occupation, who are committed to seeing this philosophy realized in K-12 schools.

Yes, you might see Dan Savage has been part of GLSEN in the past and probably is to this day, but I do not judge an entire group by the acts of one person.

[Maugena]

Even among the virulently anti-gay American bishops, Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt stands out. More than perhaps any other prelate in the country (with possible competition from New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan), Nienstedt has turned the fight against marriage equality into an all-out crusade. He's inserted a prayer for marriage discrimination into the Catholic Mass; turned that church's holiest sacrament into a weapon against LGBT people; ordered his priests to organize grassroots political committees in their parishes -- at parish expense -- for the express purpose of drumming up support for Minnesota's proposed constitutional marriage discrimination amendment; and essentially told those same priests that if they opposed the Minnesota Catholic Church's war on LGBT people, couples, and families, they had darn well better keep their traps shut about it. (And incidentally, Nienstedt's spiritual bullying was recently endorsed by none other than the Pope himself.)

With so many malicious anti-gay attacks to his credit, one could be readily forgiven for overlooking another one that I mentioned only briefly in a previous post: "Nienstedt also spoke about sending teams consisting of 'a priest and a married couple' into Catholic schools to discuss marriage discrimination with schoolchildren." That's right: Nienstedt planned to send teams of adults into Catholic schools to teach children that, if the Minnesota Catholic Church has its way in November, only some of them will be worthy of marriage when they grow up.

Awful, no? Well now, thanks to Jon Tevlin of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we know that these mandatory marriage discrimination lectures are indeed taking place at Catholic schools across the archdiocese. But in at least some of those schools, students are very unhappy about being forcibly subjected to such a decidedly un-Christian message. Tevlin interviewed Matt Bliss, a senior at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis, about what happened at his school's assembly:

"The first three-quarters of the presentation were really good," said Bliss. "They talked about what is marriage and how marriage helps us as a society. Then it started going downhill when they started talking about single parents and adopted kids. They didn't directly say it, but they implied that kids who are adopted or live with single parents are less than kids with two parents of the opposite sex. They implied that a 'normal' family is the best family."

"When they finally got to gay marriage, [students] were really upset," said Bliss. "You could look around the room and feel the anger. My friend who is a lesbian started crying, and people were crying in the bathroom."
I don't know about you, but reading stories like this makes my blood boil. But check out what happened next:

Bliss was one of several students who stood up to argue with the representatives from the archdiocese. One girl held up a sign that said, "I love my moms."

Mike O'Keefe, a spokesman for the school, said that other students were mad that some of the students spoke out and thought that some of them were "rude" to the visitors from the archdiocese.

"We weren't being rude," countered Lydia Hannah, another student who spoke out. "But people were upset, and we weren't just going to sit there."
The students had ample reason to be angry. According to Hannah, she and her fellow DeLaSalle students were suspicious when they found out that only current seniors would be required to sit through the marriage lecture. She said, "We put two and two together -- all of us will be able to vote next fall [on the constitutional amendment that limits marriage to same-sex couples]." These suspicions were confirmed when the presenters directly addressed the proposed amendment, albeit briefly due to the angry reaction it elicited from the students.

The priest-couple team didn't stop there, though. Bliss told Tevlin that when someone in the audience stated that two men, for example, were perfectly capable of enjoying a loving, committed, stable relationship, the diocesan couple onstage equated that loving same-sex relationship with bestiality. Hannah was shocked by these comments, and she was equally shocked to hear one of the presenters characterize adopted children as "sociologically unstable." Hannah herself is adopted.

Bliss eventually decided he'd had enough:

At one point, Bliss raised his hand and, "as politely as I could," began to argue with the presenters. He used his knowledge of history to refute many of their points, and explained that various cultures have accepted and embraced homosexuality going back hundreds of years.

"I think they were surprised by the history I gave them and surprised that I was so calm," said Bliss. "I don't think they expected the response they got from the students."
Since the diocesan priest and DeLaSalle administration officials abruptly ended the assembly after it became clear that the students weren't exactly drinking the punch, Bliss' assessment appears to be accurate. Angry students were allowed to stay afterward and continue the discussion with archdiocesan officials, which resulted in a more civil atmosphere, at least temporarily. However, Tevlin wrote that "the more questions the presenters tried to answer, the worse it got."

And it didn't end well. Said Bliss, "It was a really awful ending. It was anger, anger, anger, and then we were done and they left. This is really a bad idea."

Predictably -- as you probably deduced from the above comment by school spokesman Mike O'Keefe -- the school appears to be relatively unconcerned about the lesbian student reduced to tears after being told her sexual orientation renders her unfit to love in a meaningful way, the traumatized teens crying in the restroom after hearing their LGBT friends slandered and humiliated, the adopted children accused of having mental problems, the boy calmly refuting anti-gay lies with historical facts, or the girl bravely standing up for her moms even as she's forced to hear them belittled in a public forum. No, the school thinks they were being a nuisance, being rude.

I beg to differ. Far from being rude, these kids are standing up for justice and equality. They are speaking truth to power, even when that means challenging the teachings of the very church that many of them presumably have spent their whole lives in. I wouldn't call that rudeness. I'd call it courage.

Minnesota Catholic Students Angry About Mandatory Anti-Gay Lecture

Just putting this here so Scotty can create a thread about it too.

Well done, Symmetry.
Quoting full wall of text in case Phatscotty missed it, hue.

[Phatscotty]

this is the last thread you should try to bully someone into doing something you want them to do...

[Maugena]

Say whatever you want. There is a way to go about dealing with the problem, and there is a way not to go about it.

It's a tragedy that gay kids get beat up and bullied and can be driven to commit suicide because of the pressure other kids and other people can place on them.

My new favorite charity is the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Check it out

http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/a ... index.html

The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.

We believe that such an atmosphere engenders a positive sense of self, which is the basis of educational achievement and personal growth. Since homophobia and heterosexism undermine a healthy school climate, we work to educate teachers, students and the public at large about the damaging effects these forces have on youth and adults alike. We recognize that forces such as racism and sexism have similarly adverse impacts on communities and we support schools in seeking to redress all such inequities.

GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes in creating a more vibrant and diverse community. We welcome any and all individuals as members, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or occupation, who are committed to seeing this philosophy realized in K-12 schools.

Yes, you might see Dan Savage has been part of GLSEN in the past and probably is to this day, but I do not judge an entire group by the acts of one person.

Stop talking like you're on their side all of the sudden. Based off your skewed view of what took place in that video, I'd say it's safe to assume that you yourself are anti-gay.

[Symmetry]

this is the last thread you should try to bully someone into doing something you want them to do...

I hope you're not referring to me, I was just drawing your attention to a similar case, although obviously slightly more serious.

[jak111]

this is the last thread you should try to bully someone into doing something you want them to do...

I hope you're not referring to me, I was just drawing your attention to a similar case, although obviously slightly more serious.

Don't worry, if he is referring to you he'll be in the wrong, everyone here is witnessing how he's been acting toward anything going on.

[BigBallinStalin]

Even among the virulently anti-gay American bishops, Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt stands out. More than perhaps any other prelate in the country (with possible competition from New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan), Nienstedt has turned the fight against marriage equality into an all-out crusade. He's inserted a prayer for marriage discrimination into the Catholic Mass; turned that church's holiest sacrament into a weapon against LGBT people; ordered his priests to organize grassroots political committees in their parishes -- at parish expense -- for the express purpose of drumming up support for Minnesota's proposed constitutional marriage discrimination amendment; and essentially told those same priests that if they opposed the Minnesota Catholic Church's war on LGBT people, couples, and families, they had darn well better keep their traps shut about it. (And incidentally, Nienstedt's spiritual bullying was recently endorsed by none other than the Pope himself.)

With so many malicious anti-gay attacks to his credit, one could be readily forgiven for overlooking another one that I mentioned only briefly in a previous post: "Nienstedt also spoke about sending teams consisting of 'a priest and a married couple' into Catholic schools to discuss marriage discrimination with schoolchildren." That's right: Nienstedt planned to send teams of adults into Catholic schools to teach children that, if the Minnesota Catholic Church has its way in November, only some of them will be worthy of marriage when they grow up.

Awful, no? Well now, thanks to Jon Tevlin of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we know that these mandatory marriage discrimination lectures are indeed taking place at Catholic schools across the archdiocese. But in at least some of those schools, students are very unhappy about being forcibly subjected to such a decidedly un-Christian message. Tevlin interviewed Matt Bliss, a senior at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis, about what happened at his school's assembly:

"The first three-quarters of the presentation were really good," said Bliss. "They talked about what is marriage and how marriage helps us as a society. Then it started going downhill when they started talking about single parents and adopted kids. They didn't directly say it, but they implied that kids who are adopted or live with single parents are less than kids with two parents of the opposite sex. They implied that a 'normal' family is the best family."

"When they finally got to gay marriage, [students] were really upset," said Bliss. "You could look around the room and feel the anger. My friend who is a lesbian started crying, and people were crying in the bathroom."
I don't know about you, but reading stories like this makes my blood boil. But check out what happened next:

Bliss was one of several students who stood up to argue with the representatives from the archdiocese. One girl held up a sign that said, "I love my moms."

Mike O'Keefe, a spokesman for the school, said that other students were mad that some of the students spoke out and thought that some of them were "rude" to the visitors from the archdiocese.

"We weren't being rude," countered Lydia Hannah, another student who spoke out. "But people were upset, and we weren't just going to sit there."
The students had ample reason to be angry. According to Hannah, she and her fellow DeLaSalle students were suspicious when they found out that only current seniors would be required to sit through the marriage lecture. She said, "We put two and two together -- all of us will be able to vote next fall [on the constitutional amendment that limits marriage to same-sex couples]." These suspicions were confirmed when the presenters directly addressed the proposed amendment, albeit briefly due to the angry reaction it elicited from the students.

The priest-couple team didn't stop there, though. Bliss told Tevlin that when someone in the audience stated that two men, for example, were perfectly capable of enjoying a loving, committed, stable relationship, the diocesan couple onstage equated that loving same-sex relationship with bestiality. Hannah was shocked by these comments, and she was equally shocked to hear one of the presenters characterize adopted children as "sociologically unstable." Hannah herself is adopted.

Bliss eventually decided he'd had enough:

At one point, Bliss raised his hand and, "as politely as I could," began to argue with the presenters. He used his knowledge of history to refute many of their points, and explained that various cultures have accepted and embraced homosexuality going back hundreds of years.

"I think they were surprised by the history I gave them and surprised that I was so calm," said Bliss. "I don't think they expected the response they got from the students."
Since the diocesan priest and DeLaSalle administration officials abruptly ended the assembly after it became clear that the students weren't exactly drinking the punch, Bliss' assessment appears to be accurate. Angry students were allowed to stay afterward and continue the discussion with archdiocesan officials, which resulted in a more civil atmosphere, at least temporarily. However, Tevlin wrote that "the more questions the presenters tried to answer, the worse it got."

And it didn't end well. Said Bliss, "It was a really awful ending. It was anger, anger, anger, and then we were done and they left. This is really a bad idea."

Predictably -- as you probably deduced from the above comment by school spokesman Mike O'Keefe -- the school appears to be relatively unconcerned about the lesbian student reduced to tears after being told her sexual orientation renders her unfit to love in a meaningful way, the traumatized teens crying in the restroom after hearing their LGBT friends slandered and humiliated, the adopted children accused of having mental problems, the boy calmly refuting anti-gay lies with historical facts, or the girl bravely standing up for her moms even as she's forced to hear them belittled in a public forum. No, the school thinks they were being a nuisance, being rude.

I beg to differ. Far from being rude, these kids are standing up for justice and equality. They are speaking truth to power, even when that means challenging the teachings of the very church that many of them presumably have spent their whole lives in. I wouldn't call that rudeness. I'd call it courage.

Minnesota Catholic Students Angry About Mandatory Anti-Gay Lecture

Just putting this here so Scotty can create a thread about it too.

If it's true that he's using church money to fund his "Hate on Gays" campaigns, then isn't anyone who donates to these church groups also responsible for supporting such bigotry?

[Maugena]

this is the last thread you should try to bully someone into doing something you want them to do...

I'd tell you to represent both sides of a conflict, but I'd be a hypocrite only because I'm too lazy to do a follow through for the other side.
But in all seriousness, you didn't even acknowledge the fact that there is, in fact, a Christian anti-gay agenda going on.
If you can't address that, I don't think you have the right to address anything that is involved in this conflict.
If you don't acknowledge it, then according to you, it's the homosexuals that are out for blood, not the other way around.