Anti-gay Hate Group disrupts Newtonville, MA school program

[Ian David]

Parents crash school's gay tolerance event
Fri Dec 17, 8:38 PM ET

Eric Johnston, PlanetOut Network

SUMMARY: Two parents, one of them a member of an anti-gay group, were ejected from an assembly designed to promote tolerance of LGBT people at a Newtonville, Mass., high school.

The disruption occurred during an assembly at Newton North High School called "To BGLAD: Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Awareness Day." Held for the past 10 years, the event is one of several ways the school district promotes diversity. Students are not required to attend.

Camenker is a member of the Article 8 Alliance, an anti-gay group that seeks to unseat four Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices whose landmark 2003 ruling in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health led to legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

"While Mr. Camenker is free to feel however he wants towards gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people, he doesn't have the right to prevent my kids, or any others than his own, from learning information that might save their lives one day," wrote Karla Hailer-Fidelman, a columnist for the Newton Tab newspaper. "The reality is, the reason we have programs like To Be GLAD is so that kids who are gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual --or have parents that fall into those categories -- don't have to live in shame or fear, which seems to be the way a handful of people want them to live."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/po/20041218/co_po/parentscrashschoolsgaytoleranceevent

Avg Rating: 4.48, 116 votes - Your Rating: 5

[Rowdyboy]

1. I take a shameful pleasure from these stories that prove not all bigots

ARE SOUTHERNERS!!! Massachusetts, the heart of blue country, has its share of stupid fundamentalists and evil right-wingers (see Louise Day Hicks as an example).

There may be more of them in the south, but they thrive EVERYWHERE in America today.

[Ian David]

2. No kidding

The Neo-Nazis just came to Boston to set-up shop to fight "the gay agenda."

[Kathy in Cambridge]

4. Camenker's a whackjob

I heard him on the news, and that's no Yankee accent. I have a hard time distinguishing them, but I know a Boston accent.

Ron Crews is another anti-gay Carpetbagger from Georgia who ran for Congress and lost miserably.

On edit: Camenker is an unhinged nutjob, according to my buddy. He has interfered in teaching sex education and other subjects in Newton schools for the past 10 years. Newton schools are some of the best in the country.

[Rowdyboy]

5. Its only appropriate.....Here in Mississippi, our biggest nutcase is from

New Jersey, and went tot college in New York.

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/barrett.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=barrett

He's head of the nationalist movement in America.

[TaleWgnDg]

8. Indeed. Camenker has a long long history of irrationalities . . .

I believe the guy isn't "all there" . . . he's been on this personal, lone, "vigilante" crap race pushing for discrimination here and there. Again, in today's news media, it's the squeaky hinge that gets the sensationalistic spotlight of "news." Crazies and all.

BTW, Newton won't be deterred by Camenker's irrational rantings.

Newton with its highly-educated residential base?! Newton? U.S. Representative Barney Frank's Newton? ROFLMAO . . . Newton, who sent a Jesuit Roman Catholic priest to the U.S. House of Representatives and whom the Pope told to leave politics because that Jesuit priest was politically "too far left" of Catholic teachings? THAT Newton, Massachusetts?

May Camenker soon desist in projecting all his inner hate, anger, and discontent upon others w/i the community. Ah, but he is very small fish in the sea. Vocal, but small.


******************************
"I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." - Voltaire


"The first amendment exists precisely
to protect the most offensive and
controversial speech from government
suppression. The best way to counter
obnoxious speech is with more speech.
Persuasion, not coercion, is the solution."
- ACLU at
http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeechMain.cfm
******************************

.

[dddem]

6. Trust me, bigots are everywhere.

I just had an argument with a republican friend who I wanted to beat the crap out of. I can't get over why some people would feel justified in denying rights to another group (gay, muslim, jewish, asian or anyone). I truly don't get it.
BTW I have lived in Massachusetts my whole life.

[TaleWgnDg]

10. Uuuuuummmmm, no.

Louise Day Hicks was an example from whence she portrayed -- a closed-minded and bitter working class or unemployed Irish Roman Catholic. That self-portrait was used in furtherance of her own self-gain as did her own father before her.

Louise Day Hicks never represented Bostonians, overall. Boston was and remains a city of liberalism. However, she tainted Boston for many years to come with racial overtones.

Hicks' appeal was narrow, overall, as was her incitefulness within two communities of predominantly Irish Roman Catholic working class or unemployed, one neighborhood in "white" Irish Catholic South Boston and the other neighborhood in "white" Irish Catholic Charlestown, Massachusetts. She inflamed the working class in those two neighborhoods to clash against other working class citizens who were African-Americans. She feed off the disarray that she climbed upon and beat into a frenzy. And the news media picked it up, nationally.

She was -- throughout her lifetime -- a hateful, angry white woman who looked down upon others for the sake of her own political power. She used others to achieve that power.

Louise Day Hicks died the same way she lived; her own family continued it's in-fighting even after her death. They waged law suit against law suits amongst themselves and their children.

Louise Day Hicks represented a long history of bigoted working class or unemployed Irish Roman Catholics in America. It's been a very long continuum from the first arrivals of Irish Roman Catholics who clashed in the race wars in Manhattan and who refused to fight in the Civil War (1861-1865) "to free the slaves," from those who ran to Mexico to fight against the USA in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

That is not to say that all Irish Roman Catholics were as bitter as those who Hicks emulated and inflamed. No, not at all. Many, if not most, were assimilated into Greater Boston's communities and other communities void of racial hate and discrimination.

.

[sniffa]

3. they better be carefuL

we don't take kindLy to fundies, especiaLLy the carpetbaggers.

[ExclamationPoint]

7. I newton????

:scared: I'm scared that's close to where I live. I remember my school having one of those meetings, and I can tell you right now if Mr. Camenker came in trying to tell my peers that gays were 'bad' I would scream and yell bigot right in his face.

[TaleWgnDg]

9. This guy is on a personal vendetta to push his own

This guy is on a personal vendetta to push his own religious and "moral" views into law and upon others. He's proselytizing his religious closed-mindedness upon others.

However, here, in Massachusetts there are laws to protect minorities of which Camenker is vehemently opposed. Camenker may have 1st amendment free speech rights but not where it interferes with peaceful and lawful assembly of others. Massachusetts has laws to protect such assemblies from such "disruptions." Of course, Camenker was ejected, and should have been ejected.

Again, this "news" article is a nothing article about a nothing guy who loves the spotlight of irrationalities shone upon himself. Folks who proselytize their angst upon others have impulse control problems and/or religious tenets that oblige them to do so or suffer the pains of eternal hell. Seriously.

Newton will continue to do what it's been doing for years and years; that is, respect the rights of minorities and include them in their public schools which is mandated by state laws here in Massachusetts, as well as comprehensive sex education programs. Many of these Massachusetts laws were pushed to be enacted by folks from Newton. Such minority-inclusive laws are allowed under our Massachusetts constitution as is comprehensive, accurate sex education courses in our public schools.

.