I am not sure if this is the right forum to put this in but I really want feedback on my message in this... I was told I was homophobic because I do not support the "Day of Silence" event that is upcoming in several weeks, and it pissed me off so much that I decided to write an article anonymously to submit to my local newspaper and school officials. I don't bash here, am not homophobic at all, I just want feedback on my article and on this very troubling event / labeling of my beliefs. Thanks to all who may read this, I realize it is a bit long!



DISCLAIMER: Before I even begin this article, I would like to immediately make clear that I am in NO WAY a homophobic individual. I am not trying to bash anybody in any way in writing this. I am merely going to express my opinion and stance following an event that happened to me, in which I was accused of being a homophobic/anti-homosexual individual simply because I stated my view on the “National Day of Silence” event to a gay student attempting to get me to participate in it. My views are my own, I speak for nobody else in this, and I have a right to express those views, just as the reader has the right to disagree with them. When reading this, please approach it with as much of an open mentality as possible.

I was in school the other day and the upcoming “Day of Silence” came up as a topic of conversation in my second period class – a student in the class was passing out sign-up forms of some sort for it. I was not particularly happy with this but I just kept my head down and did my work, talked to the person next to me, just went about my business. When this student came to me, he attempted to hand me a sign-up form and I told him “No thanks, I’ll pass man.” Nothing hateful, not a barbed remark, simply a polite refusal. Instead of accepting this refusal and moving on, the student proceeded to question me as to why I didn’t want a form. I told him, “I don’t want to participate in that event.” I knew where the whole conversation was about to go and I tried to avoid it – I had no desire to speak about it, I wanted the guy to move on and let me do my thing. He then proceeded to ream me for not being supportive of the “LGBT community” (I will refer to this “community” as homosexual individuals throughout this article, for reference). This student actually said to me, word for word, “Homophobes like you are the reason the LGBT community has been brought down in modern society, why we have no rights. If you people would just accept us for who we are, this world would be a much happier place.” This sparked an intense argument between this student and myself, and ultimately resulted in MY being told to stop harassing the guy, when HE started the entire argument by refusing to accept my refusal and calling me out as being homophobic. According to my moral compass, that is just flat out, unequivocally wrong.

As I stated in my disclaimer, I am by no means a homophobe. I have known people that ARE totally anti-homosexual, just as I have known gay and lesbian people in my lifetime. I have known several homosexual people and not even been aware of it until they revealed it, sometimes after years of classes together. I do not have any issue with homosexual people as long as they do not push their lifestyle/beliefs at me. If you are gay, that’s your decision and I wouldn’t presume to try and change your mind on it, just as I would assume you would not presume to change my mind on being a heterosexual male. Unfortunately, not just in the case of this student, I have time and again been confronted by homosexual individuals who claim I am totally unsupportive of what they call “gay rights”. This is quite simply a cause for concern for me, for multiple reasons. Foremost among those reasons is that I am being unfairly labeled and criticized for my beliefs.

I’d like to outline, very specifically, why I am against the concept of the “Day of Silence”. This is a yearly event (formed within the last twenty or so years if I recall correctly) that is designed to promote awareness of the discrimination faced by homosexual individuals in modern society. I cannot argue that people of this disposition are not to an extent unfairly treated, not in a society where someone can be denied business because they are gay, or in which the word “******” is still used rampantly. We live in the United States of America, the one country in the world where individuals truly have opportunity to be whoever they want to be, to do whatever they want to do, and believe in whatever they choose to. However, the Day of Silence is of great concern to me as an American. This event is primarily one in which the younger generation participates, which means it is present in schools across the nation. THIS is the critical issue for me in talking about the Day of Silence.

In recent years, society has seen a massive shift in the direction of being “politically correct” at all times, and this trend is no more prevalent than in the public school system. We can’t talk about politics, guns/gun control, religion, ideological beliefs, or even some holidays in school as a result of this, because they are almost considered “taboo topics”. They’re what I call the “opinion topics”, the ones that find someone either for or against them with little room for any sort of middle ground. These are the topics that cause arguments, the topics that are laced with political undertones and private agendas. With this in mind, I pose this question to the reader: how, in this system of censorship found in public school systems, can homosexuality (which is one of THE topics of debate in modern America) be an acceptable topic to discuss, and in many cases, promote the advancement in society of?

Again, I am not against homosexual individuals. But I cannot in good conscience stand behind an event, really a movement, of such a nature when I can be suspended for drawing a stick figure holding a pistol in its hand, for wearing a pro-2nd Amendment shirt, or for telling somebody I don’t believe in the message of their religion. If my right to free speech is limited in such a way, if I cannot demonstrate MY own beliefs on certain topics that have relevance to me in my life, why should the Day of Silence be allowed to occur in schools throughout the United States? Why should homosexual individuals (and those who support them, I realize I have missed that up to this point) be allowed to express their beliefs so OPENLY as to be allowed to take a vow of silence for an entire day? Especially when homosexuality is in many ways a more contested topic in society than the other “taboo/opinion topics”? I cannot even begin to express my utter disbelief at the double standard present here. I get that these people face some pretty harsh and unfair treatment in terms of bullying, but to me that is a crutch on which the creators of this event fall back upon in order to promote a larger message, a deeper ideology that should not be present in a school system or any other such venue. I am not trying to sound cold here, but heterosexual teenagers get bullied just as much. People get misunderstood and bullied for a number of reasons. The entire “promote awareness of the unfair treatment of these individuals” message doesn’t cut it for me when we as a society don’t have such dedicated or mass generic anti-bullying movements.

I also take mild offense to the Day of Silence event because it demonstrates a total lack of respect for the beliefs of others. I do not believe this, but to many, homosexuality is a sin for which one is sentenced to divine punishment in the form of Hell. To many, homosexuality is offensive. It goes against their religious or ideological beliefs (again, the “taboo/opinion topics” arise) and those people have every right to be affronted by this event. It shoves a message/belief in their face that goes directly against their core values, and this IS what I believe is a problem. I personally do not care if you are gay, but don’t “wave” it in front of my face and try to shove it down my throat. That is exactly what the Day of Silence does. That is what “Gay Allied Youth” clubs in schools do. They force people to at least acknowledge the presence of an organized movement in which they may not believe in. But when people attempt to protest this, they are for all intents and purposes crucified for attempting to stand up for their own beliefs. They are labeled, rightly or wrongly, as homophobic. They’re targeted, singled out, punished for countering belief with belief. It amounts to something as simplistic as this – the Day of Silence for promoting awareness for homosexual/etc. individuals is socially acceptable, but if heterosexual students banded together to form a counter Day of Silence event promoting heterosexuality, they would be ridiculed and scorned, and in all likelihood the event would not even be allowed to take place. This is the direction our society is heading in.

I appeal to the reader to evaluate the arguments I have presented – I could easily go on for twenty pages about this particular topic, and I am happy to CIVILLY debate my opinion should anyone wish to, however I do not want anyone to take this out of context. The Day of Silence can exist, that’s fine by me – but keep it out of the public schools. If I cannot promote my beliefs as openly, I do not and cannot understand what makes this event so acceptable. If I cannot express my opinion on a topic without getting in trouble – which is constitutionally righted to me – then these people have no right nor business pushing their opinion at me. I simply refuse to be labeled a homophobic man because I don’t participate in or support a “Day of Silence”.