She says that “name-calling is deplorable and should stop”; that she has “never bullied a homosexual teen or endorsed such despicable behaviour”; and that “schools must work to end bullying”. She acknowledges that “all are created in the likeness and image of God” and tells us that “no conditions, volitional or non-volitional, including homosexuality, diminish the pleasure [she] take[s] in people’s company or [her] respect for their myriad good qualities.”

But she opposes Day of Silence and GLSEN, whose object it is to end such bullying, and it is here that is difficult to discern whether she is being deliberately dishonest or simply obtuse. I say this because she makes claims about Day of Silence and GLSEN which are demonstrably false. She says that:

(1) “the goal of undermining moral opposition to homosexual behavior” is “integral to the agenda of GLSEN”. This statement is simply untrue: GLSEN takes no position on the rightness or wrongness of sexual behaviour, as a glance at the GLSEN website will show.

(2) “Day of Silence and gay-straight alliances seek to end bullying by transforming disapproval of homosexuality into approval.” Notice how she here takes refuge in ambiguity: what does she mean by “homosexuality” in this context? If she means “homosexual behaviour”, the statement is again simply untrue, as can be ascertained from the DOS website, and she must know it.

(3) “For organizations like GLSEN, the goals of ending bullying and normalizing homosexuality are indissolubly linked. They refuse to decouple them.” Note again the unclear meaning of the word “homosexuality”. If here, too, she means “homosexual behaviour”, the statement is once again false. It is she who refuses to “decouple them”.

So what does she really want? Does she want to end overt bullying but still want to make LGBT students feel disapproval for being who they are and to make them feel “abnormal”? If so, why, and by what right?

Or does she know that the bullying of LGBT students is wrong and must be officially condemned – but feel that in practice it must be unofficially tolerated, or at any rate treated with kid gloves, because the bullying of LGBT students, even to the point of suicide, is a “lesser evil” than leaving the tiniest loophole for the impression that homosexual behaviour may not always and in all circumstances be wrong?

St Augustine is said to have prayed, “Lord, make me chaste, but don’t do it yet.” Is Ms Higgins’s secret prayer “Lord, put an end to anti-gay bullying, but not in my lifetime”?

Unjust suspicions? If so, she has no-one but herself to blame for them. What else can one suspect of a woman who purports to be against anti-gay bullying, yet opposes organizations which aim to put a stop to it, and attempts to justify her opposition by ascribing, without any justification, ulterior motives to those organizations?

She’s posted yet another tiresome tirade on the IFI site, complaining again about this blog (Does this woman have a life?).—RU486

Her two posts taken together paint the clearest picture of her world-view. In the most recent post (4/24/2009) she posits:

The problem may be that splintered families create hurt and anger in children who look for vulnerable peers upon whom to unleash their anger. The problem may be that there are too few intact families raising children with authentic Christian beliefs. It is Scripture that would teach children to love their neighbors as themselves, and to know right from wrong.

So, perhaps it’s the adults that need to learn “to love their neighbors as themselves, and to know right from wrong.”

This, of course, isn’t the business of public schools. Nor is it the business of public schools to promulgate to children the bleakly deterministic, arguable theory that homosexuality is inherent and immutable, or the non-factual belief that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality.

OK, if IFI believes that it “isn’t the business of public schools” to teach “Christian beliefs” or scripture then why are IFI’s DSA (Division of School Advocacy) loaded with rhetoric about how God and “exposure to conservative views” is missing from the classroom? IFI DSA is obsessed with keeping anything contrary to their religious conservative agenda out of the classroom, and if that isn’t going to happen they want equal time, so that they can promote their brand of unproven, nonfactual, divisive, and often hateful political views.

Ms. Higgins is an articulate spokesperson for a conservative, so called “pro-family” organization. That organization claims to stand for lots of things, but apparently chief among them is the belief that being gay can never be accepted as natural, healthy, or for the benefit of society. Both the post that started this thread, and the one RU486 and I now comment on here have one message: homosexuality is immoral, ultimately corrosive to society, and should not be discussed in publicly funded schools without a counterbalancing message of Christian conservatism.

If it isn’t obvious by now, let me make it clear: I profoundly disagree with IFI and Ms. Higgins where it comes to judging the worthiness of gay people to love and commit to each other, marry, teach right from wrong, contribute to the ability of children to think critically about the issues of the day, or be regarded as peers worthy of respect and consideration in every aspect of life.

She’s posted yet another tiresome tirade on the IFI site, complaining again about this blog (Does this woman have a life?). Poor, poor Laurie Higgins. Imagine, people are daring to insult her on blogs! What is this world coming to? It’s getting so a narrow minded bigot can’t spew nastiness and promote discrimination without people actually taking offense and (Gasp!) saying unkind things about her! She then attempts to pad her argument by bringing up the Miss USA/Perez Hilton kerfuffle. All I can say is, Laurie Higgins: You’re no Miss California. And you’re no lady.

Sexual orientation is not sexual activity. Even a first year Psychology student knows that.

Engaging in a hetero sex act does not make a homosexual “a little bit heterosexual.” It makes them a homosexual who engaged in a heterogenital act.

People aren’t black and white – no one is 100% hones or 100% a liar. One behavior does not define us while the sum total of all our behaviors says a great deal about who we are.

The word gay means same sex attracted, the congressman with the “wide stance” is most certainly gay to some degree and probably a large degree. The gender(s) to which we are attracted is a huge part of who we are, it is at the core of our very being and it is not surprising that this usually results in sexual activity with that gender(s). The idea that one can hate the sin and love the sinner is untrue. When you hate the sin you to at least a small extent hate the nature of the person that gives rise to the “sin” or in the case of gayness and some Christians you hate the core nature of that person.

Christians may claim to love murderers, but they’ve bastardized the word love to mean something totally unrelated to what most people take it to mean. They don’t honestly mean it gives them joy to be around a murderer, that they admire and have a fondness for who that person is, that they can’t wait to be in their presence because that is so pleasurable – they mean “love” as in “I want to control you to make you do what I think is right”.

It’s time this thread gets back on topic.

By the same token a gay man who successfully has sex with a woman is at least in some small part hetero or bisexual or he wouldn’t have been able to complete the act. He still may be 99% gay but he most certainly is a “tiny bit hetero”. Behaviors aren’t totally disconnected from who we are as people and hence the idea that one can condemn behaviors without condemning the person is a fallacy.