Ex-gay where it shouldn't belong (IE anywhere)

You know, Virginia, I stood up for you last post, and you have to go and do this on me.

I've heard lots of complaints in my time about religious conservatives who want us to "think of the children," who don't want to have to explain to their children why Adam and Steve are kissing. You know, let children be children and not touch any idea of sex that isn't just something scary only married people do to have seventeen babies. And it makes God cry otherwise.

In a lot of ways, they wanted to keep sex off of the table, it seemed. I have never agreed, but it makes them uncomfortable, and these are their children, their business.

But, now, as is the way with sex-obsessed fundies, people whose sexual mores seem to warrant billboards telling them not to commit adultery, they are being delightfully hypocritical.

These are the people that fight books with gays in them from hitting public bookshelves. They don't want to cross that bridge with little Jimmy and Suzie. But now that it's on their terms, painting gays as abominations unto God, it's alright. I suppose you can cross that bridge with the little ones as long as there's hate on the other side, not something to humanize a minority.

Not to mention the idea of handing these ex-gay fliers to elementary and middle school students. Now, this is only a ploy to reach impressionable minds, and, as always, it makes me ill. Not to mention that elementary school children don't have the most concrete ideas about their own sexuality, and that middle school kids are having a tough enough time, especially if they are coming to terms with being gay (no small task in today's world) that they don't need this shit to make them feel worse, or do some severe psychological damage to themselves for the sake of fitting in.

It's sick, and it's very harmful to these kids' psyches. The Arlington County Court should be ashamed of itself. The school board made the correct call, not to mention the simple fact that, in actuality, public schools have few civil rights protections within their doors (we were reminded of this quite frequently in high school).

They complain that they have the right to freely organize as an extracurricular type group. To come to schools as a counterbalance to those pesky Gay-Straight Alliances. Well, you see, we have this separation of Church and State thing here, and it does apply to schools, as they are government run. I'll accept religious groups the moment they are doing something constructive (other than teaching gay children how horrid how they were born is), and the moment they stop having a hissy fit over things like the Atheist Club and Pagan Student Alliances. It's a two way street, kids.

To be honest, I'm a bit wigged that Arlington County is where this occured. For non-Virginia natives, this is a county in the northeastern part of the state, where a lot of people settle in order to work in DC. It's a hodge-podge of many different sorts of people, not exactly the best fundie material, really. But then, we look at the Liberty University hiring, god spouting administration, and I suppose it's changing.

Though, I still have a hard time conceptualizing it.

It's a shadow of what they'd love to do: block all other viewpoints to force theirs upon others (nothing pro-gay, all must be full of hate and shame regarding those damned homosexuals). We can't just have parents individually choose whatever they would like to teach their children regarding morality, can't have them having many viewpoints to choose from (I believe this is because when all the viewpoints are placed upon the table, the fundie one tends to lose). They can claim that it's to open up conversation, but I doubt that'll be the case, knowing the fundie track record for discussing things like homosexuality and the Bible.