Homophobic Speaker at My School - Notified the ACLU

No question, you are definitely doing a good thing here! Her speech was offensive to your beliefs and your person, and you have every right to complain of it! A person like this woman should not be pushing her beliefs like this on school children.

Good luck, I hope you do go through with this!

 

my question to you would be:

1. what do you want to happen here? do you want to bring a case against teh school or school district for allowing her to speak about the topics she did?

2. are you out to yoru parents or to people at the school?

3. you did not mention discussing any of this with the school itself. do you speak to a principal or a counselor at teh school about this to see what they thought? possibly they were not aware of the literature she would be bringing into the school.

4. i am not sure how the ACLU works but if you are bringing a grievance to them about the school maybe it can be anonmymous. if not, then maybe u should discuss with your parents prior to moving forward with something like this.

if teh school blew you off when you tried talking to them, i can see you trying to btring this up to other organizations but the school doesn't sound like they are aware of this or taht anyone had an issue on it.

the lady can promote her thoughts and literature in any school or place that allows her to speak. the school determines who they allow to speak, so if you have an issue, its with teh school, not teh lady, but it does not sound like you brought the issue up to the school so they can try and fix it going foward.

 

I'd say go ahead and feel comfortable talking to the ACLU. They are the professionals in this area. Tell them the whole story, including why you didn't go directly to the school with your complaints. They may tell you that you should have to personally complain first, because you always hear about them getting involved only after some principal or whatever doesn't allow a GSA or same-sex dates or "saying gay" or whatever. If that's the case, then you have to weigh it against your parents/sister/home life. But I suppose the ACLU could act as your "agent" because you want to remain anonymous. I don't know. But it can't hurt to talk to them, see what they say. It'll probably be really educational. Keep us informed!

 

I think as long as you can remain anonymous, you'll be fine. There's no reason they should be having homophobic speakers at the school, and as long as you can be anonymous nothing bad should happen.
Good luck. :icon_bigg

 

Granted, I'm atheist, so I'm a bit biased, but I agree that schools should be free of religion of all kinds. I don't think that religion should be taught in schools in any shape or form and this woman totally was teaching religion. That should not be allowed.

 

I think that you are doing the right thing. School should be a safe place. It should not allow religious people in there to throw their religion around.

 

is this an anti religion site? i dont think we should discriminate against people that believe in religion there are many on here so no need to bash religion at all.

as far as this lady, you can hate her if you want, but she was only promoting her agenda and the school let her come. so instead of bashing the lady, your issue is with the school.

likewise, i'm sure some partents of striaght kids would be upset if someone came into teh school talking about how it was ok to be gay and how people should accept that. does that also violate the non gay students rights to sit through that? coudl the parents perceive it as indoctrination? would someone say the speaker had a gay agenda?

i do not know. im only showing there are two sides to this. if you are an atheist, that's fine. church was taken out of public school years ago and all reference to any God or diety was removed. Look at the school systems now.kids getting shot up, and all matter of craziness happening in the schools. But I digress. Unless your school was a religious private school, the religious commentary should not have been there. sounds like you want to take it to the ACLU, that's your choice.

 

You're doing the right thing. You're fighting for what's right and that's everything if you ask me.

 

It's really great what you're doing. I'd definitely like to hear how it goes with the ACLU, if you feel like sharing that as well.

 

To the OP - this is fantastic! Good for you, you are absolutely doing the right thing. As long as you have clear and fair goals in mind (and it sounds like you definitely do), there's nothing to be worried about. Plus, if it's anonymous, you don't even need to think about the publicity factor (though even in that case, assuming that you talked about it with your family, I still think it would be a good idea).

I think you're right - allowing people to say things like this in an official capacity contributes to environments and mindsets that allow bullying and other homophobic things to happen. Congrats on being part of the solution.

 

I think your doing the right thing and I hope it goes good for you. Stop those homophobic people and all their hate.

 

Here's my two pennies. I think her heart was in the right place, but a school was not the proper setting for her to do that. Now if she went to a youth bible group then yeah I'd agree with it. School is a different matter.

 

You are absolutely, 1000% doing the right thing. If she's doing this at your school, she's doing it at other schools, too. That means there's going to be another uncomfortable kid (or twelve). That sort of thing can push people deeper into their own closet, and that's not okay. You're standing up for yourself and for the people who are too afraid to speak up. There is nothing wrong with that.

Please keep us updated.

 

Absolutely you are doing the right thing. Texas is very resolute in keeping things a certain way (read: small town America 1955) but as the rest of the world progresses, it just makes our state stand out more and more as a hotbed of intolerance and willful ignorance. As much as they refuse change here, it only will increase the pressure from the rest of the wold to do so.
Yes, they are very resistant to change here and are openly resistant to a lot of things. However, that's not all of Texas or the mindset of every Texan.
I understand the difficulty that you could face if you were revealed as the source of the complaint-- when I realized I was gay at age 13, I lived in a town of 8,000 in a remote corner of California where tolerance meant "we'll give you a chance to leave town." My stepfather worked for the District Attorney's office and my mom worked in social services. Everyone knew us and being out was just not possible.
You are doing a good thing, the right thing. Hang in there and follow it through. You will be helping current students as well as future students. I'm proud of your courage!

 

That's so great that you're notifying them so hopefully another kid doesn't have to go through the same thing.

I recommend writing everything down that you remember so you have a report you can give. You can even interview/talk with students/teachers on what happened. It would be good to be thorough so your statement doesn't get passed off as a petty complaint. Not that it will, but I would go all the way.

Now it depends on how far you want this to go and what you want to get out of this, as someone said above. As someone said this may turn into a test case, and the media and other factors may get involved. If I had this situation I would want to go for it (and media in the US would only help in this particular situation). This might not happen, but I thought I would mention it just in case.

 

Stick with it.

The only thing worse than a homophobic person is a homophobic person with power.

 

Nothing wrong with promoting abstinence. God knows there is ample promoting of promiscuity. You have to make your own decisions, either way it is important to understand there are others like you. Don't get me wrong, sex is fun, but there are more important things in life. It is wrong to stigmatize the way she did though, I am surprised the school let it fly. You may learn a lot from going to the ACLU. You could also have a bit of understanding too because folks such as her often mean well but have there own share of problems and are just as worthy of pity as she believes "the gays" are. In fact, a lot of her research was likely done myopically only to bolster her own projections.