It’s inevitable that something as controversial as the National Day of Silence would encounter some opposition.
The annual event, now on its 12th year, directly counters homophobic bullying in schools. This, of course, means that we have a “gay issue” within the halls of lower education, which really, really pisses off conservatives.
Thus, it should come as no surprise to hear that Washington state’s Mount Si High School saw itself turn into a culture war battle field today as Reverend Ken Hutcherson led a group of about 100 “prayer warriors” against the school.
There were other demonstrations across the country, like Arizona, but Hutcherson gets – and deserves – special mention for a few reasons.
Today’s numbers alone are impressive: 100 “prayer warriors,” 50 silent protesters, 500 students who stayed home and about 250 demonstrators in total and an unknown number of coppers keeping it all in check. That’s going to attract some attention
Then there’s Hutcherson himself. He’s obviously going to draw the eye. You see, before he was a pastor, Hutcherson played professional football. An athlete turned man of God? That’s a story in and of itself.
Add anti-gay fundamentalism and a penchant for public displays of insanity and you’ve got a media powder keg! Not to mention his recent attack against Microsoft, whom Hutcherson lambasted for their pro-gay politics. (No word on whether Hutcherson knows Bill Gates owns a bunch of stock in PlanetOut.)
All of this already makes Hutcherson pretty scary – he’s got a ready-made platform for his spotlight grabbing antics. If that light’s moved just a bit, however, Hutcherson’s unique ghoulishness reflects an entire ideology. And provides a perfect example of a movement’s insidious rationale.
Consider Hutcherson’s statement on today’s protest:
It is time for us as moral people to be unashamed and take a stand. We must make a moral statement in our public schools. It is time for opponents of the ‘Day of Silence’ to come out of the closet.
Despite Hutcherson’s clever attempt to make so-called “moral people” into the central victims, he doesn’t make enough effort to camouflage his true message: the Christian right needs to infiltrate the schools. Hutcherson, in fact, wants to do the same thing he accuses gays of doing. But, of course, Hutcherson’s self-explanations just perpetuate his narcissistic mission.
Here’s what he had to say about Microsoft’s domestic partnership support:
I said (to Microsoft), ‘When you stepped outside of your four walls, you gave me the right to step inside your four walls because you’re trying to make your policy my policy by pushing state law.’
This isn’t our world or God’s world. It belongs to Hutcherson and his holy roller friends. That’s what they believe, anyway. And that’s precisely what makes people like Hutcherson so frightening. They are insane enough to believe they’re meant to spread an exclusionary “moral statement.”
The United States may be inching toward progress, but it’s at a snail’s pace. Regardless of local and state victories, people like Hutcherson are still going to come out against gay rights. And his comments provide a pretty good road map of their ideological stagnation. It’s always good to brush up on the basics, because your “moral” enemy won’t always be as headline grabbing as Hutcherson. You want to know what to look for, right?
Here’s some PageOneQ-provided video from the Hutcherson Battle:
Afroguapo
The obsession is strange to the point where it makes one wonder if he has homosexual tendencies.
queerunity
im glad the united church of christ stood up, thats nice
http://www.queersunited.blogspot.com
Camlin
I too am a christian and yes it does say that homosexuality is a sin, but no din is bigger than any other. You don’t go around judging people and what they do. He’s giving the church and other christians a bad name. He needs to let this go and woory about how he serves God, not how other people are living theirs. I can only imagine the kind of torment he may be causing his daughter, who is one of few blacks in that school. My son was in the middle school in North Bend which is where Mt. Si high is located, not in Snoqualmie. I also wonder did he have an encounter that makes him feel so adament about this mission of his. He needs to let it go and move on, I’m embarassed for him. Us black people should care less whether someone is gay or not. I’ll pray for him.
An Other Greek
a hate-mongering charlatan attended by stupid people
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Kevin
As a 19 year old gay guy, and Christian, it pisses me off when people try to use Christianity to justify anything negative. I don’t believe homosexuality to be a sin, and not all Christians do. The entire idea of a “prayer warrior” is disgusting and perverts the message of Christ.
CitizenGeek
Ken Hutcherson is indeed a vile, vile person. I’m applaud the students and that Church for standing up for what’s right!
Charley
Looks like the mythology (Christianity) that white slave masters introduced to black slaves has spun out of control by black pastors.
“I’m a child of the king”. Hint, there can be no king in a democracy, if so, it becomes a theocracy.
Dom
How’s that Microsoft boycott going, Rev? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Z
GROSS!
http://www.ilovezeren.com
Thom
To the individual who stated that in the Bible it states that homosexuality is sin, please point that out to me. Are you misreading the Old Testament as so many Christians do? Do not allow their message to seep into your spirit. If you consider yourself a believer in God, and according to the bible, God does or creates no wrong, how can being gay be wrong since it is not your choice. SO God set you up to fail huh? Christians really need to study their own bible and get to know the God they claim to serve.
An Other Greek
one more thing, Jesus delivered his followers away from…, no, not Romans or Greeks, or even the muslims who came much later.
No Jesus’ purpose was to deliver the Jews from the bounds of the Old Testament!
This resurgence, fashionable as of late through fundamentalist protestant sects, of the Old Testament values, is, IMHO a curious defeat of Jesus’ message.
Leave the Old Testament to Judaism, and focus on Christ. IF you want to be a “Chrisitian”…
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M Shane
It’s really insane that despite the fact that NO ONE was so blasphemous as to claim that Christ himself or that a God of any kind made the remotest statement against homosexuality or any healthy exercise of sex., so many people have concocted the idea that homosexuality is “a sin” .
Indeed, I can just feature Jesus giving a sermon on the Mount especially condemning “cocksuckers and cornholers.”
The fact is that the only people who Jesus really condemned were Capitalists.(the deal in the temple) with the moneychangers) I can imagine what he would have to say about the
crude scumbags who bankrole off of hatred.
Even in the old testament one of the most preeminent sytories is about samuel(?) who expresses his physical love in no uncertauin terms.
To take the word of Prurient Paul is just dumb
for all we know he just fucked goats all the time or was to ass ugly to get laid and took it out on everyone else:
How stupid do people have to be. It only takes a small amount of sense to figure out what would same the world.
TG
http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org
leomoore
I won’t argue theology. I would have to believe in it to argue with it. Fundamentalist religious fervour is a mental disease that makes its victims susceptible to manipulation by narcissistic former professional football players.
I don’t believe that most of our opponents are repressed homosexuals. That would be like saying someone who is anti-semitic is a repressed Jew or that a white member of the KKK is a repressed black person. It’s a pointless and impotent charge that fails to acknowledge the depth of hatred we face.
Charley
LeoMoore
You are absolutely right. Fundamentalist religious fervor is a mental illness, both black and white. The Moses mythology, taught to blacks by slave masters, is very meaningful in “Set my people free”. The trouble with that thinking, is that all the other baggage goes along with the teaching of Moses, especially Leviticus.
On the white side, like Hagee, they are trying to gain power through the Moses myth for fundraising. Unfortunately, the white and black evangelicals are coming together, making that movement stronger. If you watch Hagee, you will see a majority of his audience now are blacks.
All this adds up to homophobic hatred, and gay bashing resulting in death to us, either though internalized homophobia, or sensitivity to live in a world full of hatred against us, therfore suicide as in so many LGBT youth.
Now the APA (American Psychological Association) is slowly moving into that religious fervor by inviting religious people to give their input in to their symposiums. That is like inviting people who believe in aliens, or Santa Claus for their expertise in mental health.
Afroguapo
Leomoore
Just to clarify, I don’t think that ALL men who are vigorously anti-gay are repressed homosexuals (many of them just overly consumed with religious dogma/piety and moral rectitude) but I do think a fair number of these men may be so vociferous in their attacks on homosexuality because they themslves may have struggled with homosexual desires (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig) or they are masking some vice (alcholism, drug use, internet porn addiction) and resorting to projection (Spitzer being a moral crusader by day but having a pechant for nubile prostitutes and dildos by night or William Bennett moral czar and his gambling addiction). Anectodally, we have seen this over and over in the news but yes, the depth of hatred that we face cannot be reduced to leveling the homosexual charge to all these individuals — even if it may stick. Oh and incidentally, there are many historical cases of “repressed” blacks (and Jews) passing for white who being hell-bent on being perceived as white and thus receiving the attendant benefits of whiteness, often sold out their blackness. To illustrate, “the illegitimate children of the Irish-born Georgia planter Michael Morris Healy and his slave Eliza Clark, who passed into the white world so thoroughly that they hired out and then sold their deceased father’s slaves to finance their trust funds. ‘They kept as quiet as possible the facts of their origins, distanced themselves from blacks and declined to take any notable actions that would advance African-Americans,’ Kennedy writes. One of the “white†children of Healy and Clark, Patrick Francis Healy, went on to become the president of Georgetown University. His brother James, a noted cleric, Kennedy writes, opposed the racial egalitarianism of Radical Republicans, concerned that they would wrongly subordinate the restoration of sectional harmony to ‘the protection, the equalization and the super-elevation of the negro.’†I say this to say that some people will hide certain things (whether true racial origins, sexual orientation, class background/humble beginnings) if they think it will put them at a disadvantage and it’s great that as time progresses, we’re becoming a more open society where younger generations of gay men won’t feel compelled to stay in any closet. See the New York Times Magazine section today for this very issue. Regards, Afro.
yah_sure_youbetcha
Don’t bother with the circular arguments about theology or Biblical interpretation. You’ll get nowhere, because ANYTHING can be justified by cherrypicking scripture. What the Bible says about homosexuality is about as relevant as what my local telephone directory says about homosexuality. How can it be that a large percentage of Christians think that God can be reduced to a book (especially one that has been manipulated and altered as much as the Bible has been over the last 1000 years)?
When it comes to my human and civil rights, I demand full equality no matter who hates us, and no matter which or whose god those haters claim to represent. I also demand it for those who are too young and too powerless to demand it for themselves.
Lord, please save me from your followers.
Tom
while we are the subject of mental illnesses, don’t you think we should let charley know about his? his repeated reference to “white slave masters and black slaves” and other posts by him on subjects of race, reveals a strange obsession with black people.
just as those who hate gays should seek counseling/medication (or a lobotomy) for their problems, people like charley who generalize, stereotype and denigrate all black people should also seek treatment.
Peric O'verde
L.’s Law: The probability that a person will deceive you, back stab you, rape you, murder you, let you down, take advantage of you or your children, gossip about you, be a hypocrite, lie, cheat you or, do any harm to you is a direct function of how righteous, holy, religious, follower of the scriptures or the “true” word of God, a good Christian (or Muslim, Buddhist, etc.) the person claims to be. The louder the claim(s) the more likely he/she will exhibit at least one of the aforementioned behaviors while smiling and praising God. You have been warned.
Afroguapo
Tom
I wholeheartedly agree but I think it may be futile. After a continuous course of this conduct, I realize it’s done partly to bait/incite people like Mr. C and me and to perhaps make himself feel superior — however tenuous and fleeting those feelings may be, esp. when he’s been called out for either just being born into the “right” family or possibly marrying for personal gain.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/06/13/the-gay-tax-protest/
Charley
Tom
Just repeating what I study about history. The following is a history of slavery in America where there is, slave masters, ect. information regarding the origins of African American Christianity.
http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm
For more information regarding Christians being invited to the APA
GO TO
TruthWinsOut.org
Charley
Tom
This is a thread about a homophobic black pastor. As far as other posts being racist, I do not know what you are referring to. I am a strong supporter of Obama. You must be reading a different Charley.
Charley
AFROGUPTO
You still have me wrong. My beef is with religion and its oppressive effects on society.
Not about race, even though many black pastors condemn us LGBT’S. Optimism exists however, as in Wright’s speech last night to the NAACP where he mentioned the difference between gays and straights, indicated the whole biblical dogma is slowly fading away.
Bob R
I have found that all religious people are delusional. The more religious, the more delusional. The god myth is very destructive and organized Christianity has retarded humanity’s growth by at least 500 years if not more. Most of this was accomplished by the Catholic church, but they are not alone in their negative impact on mankind. I try to avoid crazy people whenever possible. Hopefully the human race will eventually evolve away from religion, if of course, religion doesn’t bring about humanity’s destruction first. The latter being the most likely!