I am going to do a short series of recent activities at the local community college. Let me start with one of Tuesdays front page headlines:

"Controversy over gay club at college gets personal"

This is one of those instances of people preaching tolerance until you happen to disagree with them, especially if it is based on a religious viewpoint. It seems that some students at the college wanted to start a gay-straight student alliance and this one particular student senator expressed her reason for voting against the charter (because of her religious beliefs). The charter was approved by an 8-4 vote, by the way, but this young lady is the only one of the four taking flack because she had the courage to say why.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

"Members of the student body said today she should be censured or lose her senate seat because she believes being gay is 'bad behavior'"

"Gary Murrell........chairman of the Grays Harbor [ACLU], came to Amanda's defense this morning. "People's views can be as idiotic as the spectrum allows".."booting a student senator for speaking thoughts is a dangerous line - a dangerous precedent - and you could face a lawsuit"" (notice the reference to idiotic. By the way, this guy is openly gay)

"During the last few weeks, anonymous posters on the college's Internet message board decried Plumb as a "radical Christian fundamentalist," "pathetic," "racist" (racist????) and someone with a "demented imagination."

"Jeremy Vaughn, the 26-year-old president of the gay-straight alliance, said he was saddened by Plumb's stance and thinks Plumb should receive some kind of reprimand. He said he'll talk to the members of his club in the next few days about whether to file a formal complaint."

"Freshman student senator Elena James, 26, said she plans on filing a formal complaint "very soon"."

"I simply don't agree with homosexuality, and I am not going to support a club that does," Plumb wrote when her vote was questioned. "It is my personal belief that homosexuality is a sin, and I am not going to support a bad behavior in any way"

I am willing to bet all those people who came out (ha, came out) against Amanda would say that she needs to be tolerant, like they are. But for some reason they are only tolerant as long as you agree with them. They are probably the same ones that would say that Amanda is a "Hate monger" because she thinks homosexuality is wrong.

I was watching a debate that was airing on a local Seattle government station between the Seattle city administrator (who by the way is an ordained Baptist minister) and an outspoken religious leader in the Seattle area about gay rights. Both these men are black. I liked what Pastor Hutchinson said about being a minority and civil rights. I'll get to that in a minute. The administrator mentioned that you can't legislate moral behavior and Hutchinson disagreed, that we legislate moral behavior all the time (murder, drunk driving, abuse, etc). He said all it takes is for one side to get more votes than the other and they win and can legislate their views on the rest of society. Anyway he said about minority and civil rights, "I was born black, I am black now, I will always be black. You will never see an ex-black man (he did mumble something about Michael Jackson but I couldn't understand what he said). If you don't chose to be homosexual, then you shouldn't see ex-homosexuals, but you do. Something you chose is not something that needs civil rights protections."

Following is a link to the article in The Daily World if you would like to read the whole thing.


http://www.thedailyworld.com/articles/2006/04/04/local_news/03news.txt