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Diaryland
The Battle Comes to My Doorstep April 09, 2005 @ 11:54 a.m.
Last Wednesday, Greg surprised me when he mentioned seeing anti-gay picketers outside Rancho Cotati High School on Snyder Lane, right behind SSU. Early that evening, when we crossed East Cotati Avenue for some smoothies, a truck drove by covered with anti-gay slogans. I flicked him off and shouted something. Greg wasn't happy I did, and I told him I was sorry but I get tired of being a nice guy all the time. There's a lot of little things that Greg does that show he's still early on in the whole coming-out process -- willing to admit he's gay but afraid of becoming a stereotype, not wanting to draw too much attention to himself, prefering apologetics to confrontation. It wasn't too long ago I was in the same place myself, so I don't bother him about it.
That evening, one of the guys from BIGLASS sent out an email asking what the hell was going on out there. By Thursday, we had organized a counter-protest anticipating the anti-gay groups were not just going to stay outside the high school but were coming onto our campus too. We turned out to have a huge homecourt advantage. The weather was great and Thursday at noon when we had chosen to organize our counter-protest happened to fall in the same slot as the Queer Lecture Series and a few hours after the Transgender theory class. Our professors and lecturers were more than happy to reschedule things and instantly provide over a hundred students and staff to protest.
We met outside the Student Union and walked out of the front entrance of school, down East Cotati Avenue to Snyder Lane and the high school. As we gathered together, I got up to speed with what had been happening. Apparently the students of Rancho Cotati were planning a fairly significant observance of the National LGBT Day of Silence, which I had completely forgotten is next week. I'm guessing they must have either gotten a lot of support or a lot of publicitity because the conservative club on campus was staging a giant protest and trying to, in their own words, "Silence the Day of Silence".
Somehow, word of it got out and some kind of national conservative organization decided to support them with money and manpower. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same people who egged on that conservative group at Santa Rosa Junior College to stick fliers with red stars on ten professors' doors citing an archaic 1950's law and accusing them of teaching communism, even though most of them had apparently never had classes with them and had accused them on such sterling grounds as, for example, being married to someone who is Arab. What really terrifies me most of all is that this all seems to be connected to a new conservative movement to strike at one of the last places in the United States where liberals are in the majority: College campuses. I've heard there is legislation being proposed to force professors to assign conservative readings for every reading they already assign that is labeled liberal. They are even trying to create mechanisms where conservative students can accuse their professors of liberal bias and bring down all sorts of consequences on them. I am so scared that we are returning to McCarthism...or worse. My friends tell me it will never pass, but I know from history how famous those last words are.
"Details in the Fabric" - May 31, 2009
Not So Quick Questions - April 6, 2009
The Morning Stars - Lords of the 15 - April 9, 2009
Sincerity and Faith in Magic - April 10, 2009
Not So Quick Questions (2) - April 14, 2009
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