Gay Tolerance Day At School Described as "Tense" - Hateful TShirts

[matcom]

<snip>

A student-led effort to oppose homophobia at Homewood-Flossmoor High School may have backfired Tuesday when hundreds of students donned shirts with Christian and anti-gay slogans.
Student activists who wore shirts emblazoned with the words "gay? fine by me" said they were outnumbered by peers wearing hateful messages and were targeted for harassment.

The T-shirt drive was intended to create a safe place for gay students and to put a human face on gays, lesbians and their allies.

But student journalists covering the event described the atmosphere as "tense."

"It was crazy. There were all these students with gay shirts and God shirts," said student newspaper reporter Joe Maloney. "In my first-period class, debate class, there were way more God shirts."

Chelsea Lavin, a broadcast student, was more pragmatic."People that you normally would say 'Hi' to in the halls were wearing shirts opposite of you, so you looked in the opposite direction," she said.

Alissa Norby, one of the T-shirt day's organizers, said she didn't know whether to define the project as a success or failure.

"If I was still in the closet and came to school (Tuesday) and saw hundreds of kids wearing anti-gay shirts, I'd probably go home crying and begging my parents to let me transfer," she said.

Students estimated more than 100 students wore anti-homophobia shirts, and more than 200 students wore shirts that listed "Crimes committed against God." The crimes included the elimination of school prayer and separation of church and state, but did not include anything about homosexuality.

Other male students wrote slogans on white T-shirts such as "I hate gay people" and "Gay? Not fine by me (unless you're a lesbian)" and "Gay? More chicks for me," students said.

http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsindex/20-ds3.htm

[sui generis]

1. kudos to the kids who stood up to the tyranny

a very important lesson.

Long after the t-shirts come off and school is back to "normal", some of those kids will realize how ugly the situation really is, every day. By "choosing" to support tolerance, they could feel for a moment what some people feel every single day.

I don't know that that school is typical of most schools, but I imagine if there were an "integration" tolerance day sponsored 40 years ago there would have been students wearing t-shirts 10 to 1 saying some of the worst racial things you can imagine.

2 to 1 is disappointing, but this certainly did not "backfire".

[Chovexani]

4. Very true

Hopefully some good will come out of it. If just one kid understands the level of visceral hatred GLBT youth face on a daily basis, then the project was a success IMO.

[fishwax]

20. true

<<Long after the t-shirts come off and school is back to "normal", some of those kids will realize how ugly the situation really is, every day. >>

good point. I hope those who wore the t-shirts as well as those who maybe didn't know how/where to stand before the day take the same message.

[Cerridwen]

2. When did it become okay to be hateful?

It's a "trend" I've noticed for about 20 years or so. My take on it is that it started during reagan's first presidency. All of a sudden, manners and common courtesy were unfashionable and the "Rule of Gold" replaced the "Golden Rule".

We've become a truly hateful and ugly people in the U.S. It's about the only type of "news" the corporate media seems to delight in "reporting".

It just makes me feel sad.

[MrScorpio]

3. This reaction happened in Southern Illinois?

Somehow, I'm not suprised

[SouthoftheBorderPaul]

6. That is a sad story...

How is it these people have embraced hatred and intolerance while completely ignoring the teachings of Jesus? I'm not some devout Christian or anything, but it seems so obvious these people pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to abide by based on convenience. "Jesus' teachings don't really apply here, since we're getting our hate on, so let's harken back to the Old Testament so we can feel justified harrassing homosexuals or their friends."

[murielm99]

7. This is not in Southern Illinois.

It is near Chicago.

[LiberallyInclined]

9. anything south of I-80 is "southern" Illinois...

AFAIC.

[AngryAmish]

16. Anything south of Madison is downstate

[XNASA]

22. H-F is in Cook County. It's hardly southern Illinois.

Jesse Jackson Jr. is the rep in that district. It's about 75% Dem as far as registered voters go.

Homewood and Flossmoor are very progressive towns. They're integrated and have one of the finest School Districts and Park District Programs in the state, if not the country.

It's a far cry from Effingham.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

26. Oh, please

You've obviously never spent much time downstate.

Or in an actual southern state.

[LiberallyInclined]

32. 4 years in champaign urbana was more than enough-

i was glad to make it back to el norte- and civilization.

now i try to keep forays south of madison(ave) to a bare minimum- the times i've been to Florida, it was mostly to get to the ocean and dive.
other than that- i can't think of any reason why i would want to visit the great red south.

[MrScorpio]

13. That makes it even worse

nt

[Blue-Jay]

5. On the other hand, it's somewhat encouraging.

I can imagine that if something of this nature were done when *I* was in highschool, the support would have been much less than what was indicated in this article. Maybe we, as a nation, are slowly evolving.

slowly. :(

[SouthoftheBorderPaul]

8. Good point...

I agree 100 high schoolers showing their support for tolerance of homosexuality is a pretty good turn out.

[johnnie]

11. I agree

When I was in high school (80-83) I don't even remember one person "coming out". Today it has come a long way. Obviously we have a long way to go, but in 20 odd years a lot of change has taken place.
It's not only the gay community that suffers from this kind of bigotry, and I have also seen big leaps in other places as well.
I know this story is frustrating, but there are many other stories out there that are encouraging.

[murielm99]

18. Five years ago, I went to my daughter's old high school

for the Day of Silence. She and I both took part in the breaking of the silence in the evening.

She was an alum of the school, and we were both active in a GLBT support group. She and another gay alum spoke, and I spoke as a parent of a gay daughter. The event was very moving, and very well-attended. What the hell has changed in five years? I am so sick of this crap.

Someone said that gays are today's Jews. They get treated like the Jews in Europe under Hitler. I mean no disrespect to Jewish people, but I am afraid there may be some truth to this.

I work as a substitute teacher to supplement my other part-time job. (Work is tough to find here). I have found that most teachers do not tolerate it when students say something is "gay" when they mean it is stupid. I am encouraged by that.

But I was doing another teacher's holocaust unit last week. We saw the horrible movies about the concentration camps. The regular teacher mentioned, as I did, that Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and others who did not fit the master race were killed.

Then, some kid came in from break. He was yelling and fighting with another boy, calling him queer and faggot. I asked him if he knew why we were watching these movies, or if he had missed the whole point. Why look at horrors from over sixty years ago, if we are not going to learn what it means to go too far with hatred?

[Bridget Burke]

10. The Christian Right has anti-homophobia targeted.

Check out Concerned Women for America for the latest Dominionist propaganda being cranked out:

www.cultureandfamily.org/articledisplay.asp?id=7882&department=CFI&categoryid=family

I'm too tired of this crap to post a clip, but I'd encourage you to click & click again. There is an official anti-anti-Homophobic movement & the news story you posted indicates it's been successful.

[ContraBass Black]

12. "God shirt"

No, that's a "hate shirt."

:mad:

[sakabatou]

14. May those kids learn to accept homosexuality

when they mature. Because they hav not grown up yet.

[samilib]

27. Isn't the older generation typically more homophobic?

I'm not trying to age bash. It's just that in my experience, the younger they are, the more tolerant they are toward difference.

[sakabatou]

30. Maybe

But then there's the influence.

[Rob H.]

15. "...T-shirts such as "I hate gay people"..."

Why not just get directly to the point and wear one that says, "I'm an asshole" or "Proud Bigot" instead? :mad:

[Mr. Blonde]

17. I was watching the inferno on MTV

I loved the shirt Mike was wearing that said "Who said I was Homophobic?" and had two women holding hands on it. There were a number of other gay support shirts on the show as well.

[miss_kitty]

19. When will 'Christians' learn

CHRIST LOVED EVERYONE, SO STFU! You AREN'T a Christian or Christ-like at all :grr: :nuke: :grr:

[GirlinContempt]

21. They were ALLOWED to wear shirts

With hate messages?

[XNASA]

23. XNASA Jr. goes to school at H-F.

We talked about it a little. He's very pro letting people do whatever the fuck they please.

He said that a lot of the anti-gay sentiment came from jocks and religious wackos. About what one would expect.

Homewood-Flossmoor is a great school. It's intergrated and they have just about every kind of program imaginable. The biggest problem thee is the sheer size of the place. 5800 students on a 46 acre campus. It's bigger than a some state colleges.

[XNASA]

24. Note this little snippet of wisdom from some godboy.

"Jacques Jacobs, youth pastor at Family Harvest Church in Orland Park, seized the opportunity to oppose the movement this year and gave away shirts with "Crimes committed against God" slogan to students."

So a youth pastor at a Church not even in the same school district decides that he should jump into the fray, huh? Orland Park is NOT in the Homewood-Flossmoor school district.

People in Orland Park are all the white people from the city and inner suburbs who partake in white flight. We in Homewood and Flossmoor gladly celebrate our diveristy, for the most part. Mr. Jacobs should kindly butt out.

[samilib]

25. That is really sad.

We always think of youth as being more liberal and more tolerant toward diversity. It looks like we still have a long way to go.

[XNASA]

28. I e-mailed the school's PR office and sent my support.

They replied right away:

"Thank you very much for the nice message Mr. X. It was a very difficult day handling the media yesterday, but it was all worth it. We are very proud of all of our students."

[Rob H.]

31. "We are very proud of all of our students."

All of them? Um....

[Democrats_win]

29. Is it just "contrarianism?" When Broncos went to 1st superbowl, someone

wore a Dallas Cowboys (their opponent) t-shirt on the day everyone was supposed to wear Bronco orange.

The kid's Parents were native Coloradoans.

The point: Don't be too upset about the symbols our kids where, the thing they enjoy most is rebelling.

[Abelman]

33. Grr...

Homophobia is rampant, still. I see it all the time and it is so hard to combat.

Sometimes, I just need to lie down.