Day of One-Sided Dialogue

The Day of Silence is coming up and will be held on April 15th. I don't have classes that day anyways, so I will not be participating this year (although not being able to talk to anybody will probably help me get more work done...). What's more interesting this year is not DoS, however. It is the Day of Discussion, previously titled the Day of Truth, which is being held on the 18th.

I am under the impression that The Day of Truth is being sponsored by a different organization than previous years. A reason for the name change may be due to the recent spike in publicity of suicides committed because of anti-gay harassment. Or they simply don't want to seem as adversarial, but it's really just a sugar-coating. It is being depicted as an opportunity for christian students to "freely" engage in dialogue with others about the love of Jesus and the truth about the bible. Their site states "Focus on the Family firmly believes that the truth will rise to the surface when honest conversations are allowed to happen." The problem here is that it has the same problems that the Day of Truth has. On the surface it may seem more accepting, open for those who support DoS to also provide their viewpoints and express their beliefs. But it's not. It is meant only for those who oppose the DoS to continue attacking the DoS and gay students in the name of religion. They are not being open to hear about how gay people are born the way they are, or that they are at a much higher risk of suicide, depression, and other mental health problems due to the harassment and bullying they are much more likely to face everyday. They claim to balance out the "homosexual-themed" day by engaging in discussion instead of silence. Seems pretty adversarial to me. It's not called the day of truth, yet they are still not being open to other religious opinions or even other interpretations of the bible.

They are also trying to hide under the guise of also trying to prevent bullying, stating "His [Jesus] example calls us to stand up for those being harmed or bullied while offering the light of what God's Word says." Yet, the Day of Silence is not about acceptance of homosexuality, it is about preventing harassment of LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT. So when a student goes to school on the 18th and gets bombarded by students participating in DoT (sorry, DoD) they don't interpret it as a loving message. The message that is being sent is "The pain you go through and the homophobia you face everyday could be avoided if you accepted Jesus into your heart and stopped being gay". That's the only message, pure and simple. And another side note, I caught a girl on their video ask "Does God really have any good advice for us in there?" in reference to relationships and marriage.Which kind of made me laugh because I know in one part of the bible one advice it gives about marriage is that you should marry your rapist, although to be fair I don't know if that's in the new or old testament. 

I also found a rather creepy part of their website "Jesus first reminded his followers that God made us in His own image, male and female. Our masculinity or femininity reflects something of God’s character. Justice and mercy. Strength and beauty. Initiative and response. These complementary qualities show us something about who God is." So their website is not only homophobic but sexist as well. It's not that I am opposed to students being able to have free speech in High School, in fact I always wished it was more open to free speech (although there is a significant different between this day being held after the Day of Silence and a similar event being held on the actual day, the latter I do have a problem with). I still retain the right to complain about the content of that speech, though.

Candi Cushman of Focus on the Family has been quoted stating "What is freedom of speech, after all, but a guarantee of the right to have dialogue?" which it is not. It takes two or more people to have a dialogue, and a dialogue is not their intention at all. They want to be allowed to preach. Which, whatever, is okay to an extent in public schools. But as soon as a student wants a student acting liek this to back off, they better back off. It's not a restriction on the fundamentalist's freedom of speech, it's a protection of the other student's right to an education and not be harassed. I also have a problem with sugar-coating things, like saying you're praying for atheists instead of saying they're going to hell. Pretty much the same thing, in fact sometimes I feel like I prefer the latter. 

*note* I'm glad that I now know what I am talking about. When my friend first brought it up to me I thought it was a post-Day of Silence event that was meant to vocally educate others about harassment to break us out of the silence, so I was kind of confused about why they were putting such a religious slant on it. How embarrassing.