Focus on the Family has taken the helm of the Day of Truth, which was spawned by the Alliance Defense Fund to oppose GLSEN’s Day of Silence. It was adopted by Exodus International this past year. Exodus relinquished custody of the DOT not long after several kids committed suicide as a result of anti-gay bullying.
Focus has decided to rename DOT the “Day of Dialogue:”
“We’re trying to raise awareness that more than one side needs to be heard on the issue of homosexuality, and we’re helping to ensure Christian students have the chance to express their viewpoint,” said Candi Cushman, a Focus on the Family education analyst, in the release. “What is freedom of speech, after all, but a guarantee of the right to have dialogue?”
Their website is still a shell, but DOD clearly misses the mark as much as DOT did, and completely misses the point of the DOS. The DOS doesn’t exist to further the acceptance of homosexuality by every person, it exists to make people aware of a specific type of bullying suffered by certain individuals. Not every victim of anti-gay bullying is indeed gay. By focusing on “God’s design for sexuality” and “sharing faith-based viewpoints” concerning homosexuality, not only is the topic of bullying avoided, it fosters the silence endured by people shamed into thinking they are outside of the correct “godly” design.
What is freedom of speech, after all, but a guarantee of the right to have dialogue
Ironically summing up exactly what’s wrong with the whole concept. A dialogue requires two people at least. There is no “right” to force someone else to speak with you or even to listen to you.
This line of attack, both from the ADF and Exodus prior and now FoTF, is just silly. The DoS is not a moratorium on discussion and they know it. The silence is supposed to emphasize the issue — there is plenty of time for discussion. No one mandates when and where during the day that silence is broken, it is simply a tool to help start a conversation.
When the time comes that a gang of gay kids daily assaults, threatens and verbally throws equivalent epithets at Christian children and that Christian child knows that when he goes home to his aetheist parents, he’s going to be further verbally abused and maybe even threatened with re-education ‘therapy’ or else he has no home…then I’d say that the Day of Truth is about dialogue and getting to a place in the middle of accord and understanding of the other.
But the Christians who are repped by FOtF and so on, are exclusively focused on the further denigration of gay lives.
There is no reason to believe that recasting themselves is a fundamental change in their intentions.
They are inappropriate in a public school or teaching arena, period.
Just as an anti Semite shouldn’t display what he thinks of Jews on Shoah or any other expression against Jews any other time in a school setting, THIS is what is actually equivalent to what Day Of Truth is.
Gay people being harmed, killed…is not a perception, it’s a reality.
And there is no amount of dialogue that will justify it, no matter what someone’s belief is.
If they are never going to believe that being gay isn’t a choice, regardless of all the scientific evidence and social facts that prove it, then they definitely have no place in an EDUCATIONAL setting.
Schools cannot be in the business of social and political regression, especially if the result is tragic and unnecessary.
So ADF (co-founded by Dobson) gave the event to Exodus (which has taken over “Love Won Out” from Focus on the Family – and Candi Cushman still speaks at Exodus events), and Exodus gave the event to Focus on the Family (co-founded by Dobson), which is trying to make it look less bigoted than everyone knows it is.