This Site Aims to Promote the Historic Oil Region of Northwestern Pennsylvania as a Welcoming Place for All and to Challenge the Bigotry of Those Who Seek to Exclude Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender People from Open and Equal Participation in Community Life, particularly the Venango County-based Hate Group known as the American Family Association of Pennsylvania. Learn more at OutintheSilence.com
In the past few weeks, the shocking number of suicides by gay teenagers has sparked a serious national discussion about the root causes of anti-gay harassment and bullying. Across the country, parents, school officials, legislators, religious leaders, and others are recognizing that young people are deeply harmed by the message that being gay is sinful and wrong. For the first time, many voices are calling for accountability from groups and public figures who misuse religion to justify anti-gay bigotry.
Not surprisingly, those who have made careers of promoting anti-gay views are fighting back. Last week, Tony Perkins, the director of the Family Research Council, attacked those who "lay blame at the feet of conservative Christians who teach that homosexual conduct is wrong." In a guest voices column for On Faith, Perkins cynically denied any connection between the harassment of gay youth and the belief that gay people are sinful and disordered. According to Perkins, all responsibility must be placed on the bully, and not on religious teachings that condemn homosexuality as a threat to society. Incredibly, Perkins claimed that if gay youth commit suicide, it is because they "recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal," not because of rejection by family, friends, and religious leaders.
Perkin's distortion of scientific research and callous disregard for the harm caused by his anti-gay views have been widely condemned, and rightly so. And yet the views he expressed are shared by millions of Americans of integrity and good will who genuinely love and care for their gay children and family members. For decades, anti-gay religious leaders have taught that homosexuality is not an innate aspect of a person's identity, but a sinful choice to engage in immoral and abnormal conduct. Many people of faith have been deeply influenced by those teachings and have internalized them with little thought or reflection.
But unlike professional anti-gay advocates such as Perkins, most people who hold these views are genuinely unaware of the harm they are causing to gay youth. Tragically, many well-meaning and loving parents and family members who have been exposed to these teachings mistakenly believe they are protecting a gay child by rejecting their child and doing all they can to force the child to stop being gay. As a result, many gay teens are kicked out of their homes or sent to therapists who try to change their sexual orientation because their parents have been taught their child is choosing "an immoral lifestyle." Many loving grandparents reject a gay or lesbian grandchild because their church group said they must do so "for the child's own good." Too often, young people are ostracized by their families at the very time they most need their love and support--because the families have been taught that is what God would want them to do.
In reality, however, sexual orientation is a God-given trait--not a "choice." There is not a shred of evidence it can be changed. And just as is true for heterosexual people, it is a very central and important part of one's being. When parents reject or punish a child for being gay, they are rejecting the essence of who their children are as people.
That rejection can have deadly consequences. Gay youth who are rejected or ostracized by their families are at high risk of depression, substance abuse, HIV infection, and dropping out of school. They are also at least four times more likely than other youth to commit suicide. For gay youth who are sent to a therapist who tries to change their sexual orientation, that risk is even higher. Let me emphasize, it is not their being gay that puts them at risk but rather how they are treated by their parents and clergy. And by people like Tony Perkins.
During my visits with people of faith in all parts of the country, I have spoken with Evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants and Jews who have been taught that homosexuality is immoral and wrong. Almost invariably, they are surprised and concerned when they hear about the harms caused by those teachings. Many have told me they had not fully considered the impact on a gay young person of being told that he is sinful and abnormal, or that he will be cut off from God's love unless he can do the impossible and change who he is.
It is tragic that it has taken the death of so many young people in the past few weeks to focus national attention on the impact of anti-gay beliefs and the central role played by anti-gay religious leaders in promoting those beliefs. Once people of faith are made aware of these facts, they must ask themselves whether causing such severe harm to young people can exist comfortably with their deepest religious values.
True faith, compassion, and love do not ask any person to harm another human being. The past weeks have made the harm caused by anti-gay attitudes painfully clear. People of faith must ask whether they are complicit in causing such devastation and whether their beliefs give them the right to judge and condemn others--even when those beliefs may convince a young person that he would rather be dead than gay.
Mitchell Gold is co-founder of renowned home furnishings brand Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, and founder of Faith in America, a 501 C-3 non profit whose mission is to educate about the harm caused to LGBT Americans by religion based bigotry; and in 2008, published a book entitled CRISIS: 40 Personal Stories Revealing The Personal, Social and Religious Pain And Trauma Of Growing Up Gay In America.
At right, Venango County-based Diane Gramley heads the American Family Association of Pennsylvania. She has yet to publicly disavow her participation, as the featured "special guest," at a "Bible Believing Christian" event in Coudersport, PA that promoted violence against transgender people.
Former Employees: Racism & Abuse in Leading Religious Right Org
Just before this year's Values Voter Summit, the progressive advocacy group People For the American Way called on Republican elected officials and candidates to condemn virulently anti-gay and anti-Muslim statements made by the American Family Association’s director of public policy, Bryan Fischer.
Fischer, who hosts a daily radio show on AFA's radio network of 180 stations, has, among other things, claimed that inbreeding causes Muslims to be stupid and violent; called for the deportation of Muslims and for banning them from military service; claimed that gay sex is "domestic terrorism"; called gay adoption a "terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children"; and claimed that Hitler and his Stormtroopers were all gay.
No one took PFAW up on its suggestion, and AFA's founder and chairman emeritus Don Wildmon was feted at the Summit's gala with the James C. Dobson Values & Leadership Award, which declared him "one of the most effective Christian leaders of our time." At the award dinner, anti-gay marriage crusader Bishop Harry Jackson called him a "legend" and "the ultimate advocate for the kingdom of God"; Focus on the Family founder James Dobson called him "a wonderful man of God" who had a "great influence" on the culture; and Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson added, "I don't think there's been a more fearless defender of righteousness and truth than Don Wildmon."
The AFA, founded by Wildmon in Tupelo, Mississippi back in 1977, was known as the National Federation for Decency until 1988. Today, along with Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, it’s one of the powerhouses of the religious right. Contributions to the nonprofit exceeded $19 million last year, according to financial data made available by the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability. In 2008, the organization donated $500,000 in support of Proposition 8 in California, twice the amount donated by Focus on the Family, and Jackson said it gave him money for his anti-gay marriage effort in the District of Columbia. It was one of the first religious right organizations to claim a role in the Tea Party movement.
"The American Family Association is one of the oldest, largest, and most radical religious right groups, and it has always played a major role in the right wing movement's efforts to denigrate gay Americans and to convince conservative Christians that liberals are out to destroy religious liberty and silence people of faith," said Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way. "The AFA has also played an active role in driving the national right-wing agenda—at the so called Values Voter Summit this year, GOP leaders echoed the AFA's talking points on gays and lesbians, Islam, and the supposed persecution of American Christians."
And yet, while the AFA has long been known for its invective against the "homosexual agenda" and its boycotts of companies that fail to meet its standards of "decency," Fischer—no policy wonk, despite being director of “Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy”—has taken the public rhetoric to a new, ugly level.
According to former employees of the AFA, the views represented by Fischer are not only tolerated within the organization, but any opposition to its anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant invective—including reliance on white nativist sources in the AFA's media programs—is dismissed. What's worse, former employees say, anyone questioning such attitudes as un-Christian is denigrated, and in some cases forced out.
Former AFA employees describe Wildmon—who led the organization until just last year—as an autocratic micromanager incapable of socializing with or showing empathy for his own employees.
Since the elder Wildmon passed the presidency on to his son Tim last year, Fischer has increasingly grabbed the spotlight. According to Allie Martin, who worked as a reporter for AFA's news service from 1997 until he was fired earlier this year, "there's really nobody else there who could step into that role."
"On paper," Martin said, "Tim is in charge," and is probably the "only person who could reel him [Fischer] in." But that hasn’t happened.
Within the organization, "people may not be comfortable" with Fischer’s rhetoric, said Martin, "but they aren't going to say much about it. They are afraid to say anything about it."
"Puppies In The Corner Who Learned to Keep Our Mouths Shut"
Martha Swindle, who worked as the elder Wildmon’s secretary from 1991 until 1999, when he fired her, said that he was perceived by donors to be a "great conservative leader," and that, "while I was there, the majority of funding came from $10 and $15 donations, people who believed in what AFA stood for." Swindle, too, believed in that vision, until Wildmon started "snooping" through her desk drawers and even her trash, she believes, ultimately firing her after another employee had found an off-color joke email she had forwarded to co-workers, an act she says she now regrets.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the AFA said it was the organization's policy "not to discuss issues regarding specific former employees."
Swindle had initially believed in the AFA's mission. "I believe God used him for his vision for the ministry," she said, adding that she is a conservative who supports Focus on the Family and similar ministries, "because I do believe in that vision."
Swindle said she still supports what the AFA stands for. "But by the time I left, it was no longer God's ministry. It had become Don's ministry."
Brad Bullock, who worked for the organization for 17 years spearheading the launch of the radio station and producing the daily radio report, was forced out 3 years ago. He said he admired Wildmon and considered him a friend, but that in dismissing him, Wildmon told him, "you have a problem and you don't know it."
Bullock said the group is "too harsh on homosexuals," though if anyone voiced concerns, "they would be attacked." He described the leadership as "autocratic" and tolerant of petty gossip among employees, like spreading rumors about employees having extra-marital affairs with one another.
Bullock added that Wildmon "chastised" people for taking anti-depressants, and that "a lot of people who had problems felt like they were second class," including Bullock, who said that he suffered from depression while working at the AFA. Employees were fearful of speaking out, according to Bullock. "We were puppies in the corner who learned to keep out mouths shut."
Inside the One News Now Newsroom
The AFA's radio and news division, in particular, said Martin, had become a place where authority could not be questioned, and where the "news" was nothing more than a mouthpiece for conservative "sources" whose views were portrayed as fact. (The Values Voter Summit award citation to Wildmon described One News Now as a "respected online news service.")
And those views were extreme, even by Martin’s standards of conservative evangelicalism. He said that the director of the news service, Fred Jackson, had a "hateful, hateful attitude" that "carried over" into stories. Martin described editorial meetings in which "liberals were accused of hating their kids," while Chad Groening, who covers immigration, described gay people as "degenerates" and "reprobates."
In the newsroom, said Martin, "I saw the tone of stories develop in a way I thought was disturbing."
"They get people as news sources to say what they want to say but can't say," he added.
After Obama got elected, said Martin, "this went up to a whole new level, we have to vilify this man."
Questioning Authority="Attitude Problems"
In 2008, Jackson sent Martin an email with the subject line "attitude problems," citing scripture he said governed "a worker's attitude toward their [sic] superiors." The verses he cited included Ephesians 6:5-8 ("Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, singleness of your heart, as unto Christ") and Colossians 3:22-25 ("Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.") He closed the email with a "final warning" that "any further breaches in this area will be turned over to Brother Don."
Among the topics about which Martin had raised concerns was the news room's approach to immigration. Martin said that Groening has, for example, called undocumented immigrants "stupid," "scumbag lawbreakers" and "freeloaders." Groening believed that illegal immigration would "destroy" the country, and that "we have the best way of life, and if our borders aren't secured, this country would be destroyed."
Martin also noted that Groening had referred to Muslims as "raghead scumbag terrorists" and referred to Allah as "Satan."
According to him, Groening received a subscription to American Renaissance magazine at the office. American Renaissance is published by white nationalist Jared Taylor, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the magazine and website "regularly feature proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-black racists." Taylor's New Century Foundation, which runs the magazine, "also sponsors American Renaissance conferences every other year where racist 'intellectuals' rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists."
AFA did not respond to requests to interview Jackson and Groening.
A 2005 profile of Taylor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described Taylor’s beliefs that: "black people are genetically predisposed to lower IQs than whites, [and] are sexually promiscuous because of hyperactive sex drives.” The profile went on to note that, “Race-relations expert Jared Taylor keeps company with a collection of racists, racial 'separatists' and far-right extremists."
In a 2004 article for One News Now, reprinted on the American Renaissance website, Groening relied entirely on the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) for a story claiming that FAIR, which he characterized as an "immigration reform organization," had revealed purported "voter fraud" in Wisconsin that proved that "non-citizens of the United States could decide the 2004 presidential election."
FAIR, which has been designated a hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of a network of groups founded by Michigan activist John Tanton; the SPLC describes the organized anti-immigrant movement as "almost entirely the handiwork" of Tanton. His network of groups was behind the passage of Arizona's harsh anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, and other initiatives.
The SPLC chronicled Tanton's ties to the nativist movement in a 2009 report based on his own papers, finding that:
[T]he papers in the Bentley Library show that Tanton has for decades been at the heart of the white nationalist scene. He has corresponded with Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and the leading white nationalist thinkers of the era. He introduced key FAIR leaders to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist group set up to encourage "race betterment" at a 1997 meeting at a private club. He wrote a major funder to encourage her to read the work of a radical anti-Semitic professor — to "give you a new understanding of the Jewish outlook on life" — and suggested that the entire FAIR board discuss the professor's theories on the Jews. He practically worshipped a principal architect of the Immigration Act of 1924 (instituting a national origin quota system and barring Asian immigration), a rabid anti-Semite whose pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was indicted for sedition in 1942.
The report also detailed Tanton's admiration for Taylor, noting how he "promoted Taylor's efforts repeatedly" and encouraged FAIR employees to receive American Renaissance mailings.
Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, first detailed the Tanton network, including its ties with white supremacist organizations and militias, in a 2005 article in The American Prospect. Zeskind reported that Tanton wrote in 1986, "To govern is to populate . . . .Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? . . . . As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?"
Groening continues to cite Tanton groups as authoritative, tellingly describing NumbersUSA as an "immigration reduction advocacy organization" in an August 2010 piece and citing FAIR in a story claiming that "illegal aliens" would "trump veterans at US medical offices."
Groening also praised a Mississippi immigration raid, citing the Mississippi Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement (MFIRE), listed on FAIR’s website as a "local group" and which is promoting an Arizona-style immigration law in Mississippi. According to a 2010 report by the SPLC, "FIRE took the lead last year in coordinating the activities of the often fractious nativist extremist movement," including launching "The Patriot Coalition, an antigovernment outfit battling 'globalism,' 'socialism' and the 'loss of National Identity and Culture.'"
The head of MFIRE, Dr. Rodney Hunt, is also treasurer of the Mississippi Tea Party. MFIRE’s tagline is "To Promote and Preserve National Sovereignty." In a recent press release, Hunt said, "We can't continue to allow the Mexican drug lords, human traffickers and terrorists organizations to enter our country at will or for illegal aliens to continue to take jobs badly needed in our state and across the nation."
Promoting white nativist views may put AFA at odds with its own allies in the religious right. In the early 2000s, Wildmon was instrumental in putting together the Arlington Group, a coalition of religious right leaders formed to fight gay marriage that also aimed to bring more African-American pastors into the fold. The AFA is also a member of the Freedom Federation, a coalition of religious right groups which described its first summit as "multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational faith-based and policy organizations and leaders committed to plan, strategize, and mobilize to advance shared core values to preserve freedom and promote justice."
Many of the prominent members of the Freedom Federation, including the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and Liberty Counsel, have expressed support for immigration reform.
Blessed By Americanized Christianity?
Zeskind told RD, "even though the FAIR staff would tell you they are not white nationalists, their concerns are the defense of country, the character of our country, and protection against the future when white people become the minority in a nation of minorities. . . . That's what the anti-immigrant movement is about."
Martin remarked that Groening's attitude toward immigration "goes to the heart of why a lot of the tea partiers and other Christian activists (not all of them) feel the way they do and are so upset. I believe they are afraid that their 'comfortable' lifestyle will be interrupted. They have bought into this idea of Americanized Christianity, that tells them God has blessed them, and evidence of that is their stuff and comfort."
This point of view is reflected in AFA's programming. In 2005, after Antonio Villaraigosa was elected mayor of Los Angeles, Jackson said on the radio, "we don't want to have two nations within our borders that can't communicate with one another... natural hostility will develop."
The following year, in an exchange between Jackson and Don Wildmon on the radio, Wildmon claimed the immigration issue was a conspiracy between "mainstream media" and "undocumented immigrants" to "weaken the red states." Jackson added, "Because we know the vast majority of mainstream journalists are liberal in their theology and in their politics, they see these people as helping to vote Democrat in the coming elections."
From Boise To Tupelo
Even before Fischer started with the AFA, Groening was hailing his anti-immigration work in Idaho, where progressives had endured years of Fischer’s vitriolic activism as head of the Idaho Values Alliance, the AFA affiliate run by Fischer, his wife, and daughter.
Leo Morales, an Immigrant Rights Organizer with the Idaho Community Action Network, said Fischer "has a very strong immigrant restrictionist perspective," and "was involved in opposing efforts around creating in-state tuition opportunities for undocumented students. He was also involved in pushing for legislation that would deny public benefits to undocumented immigrants."
According to Jody May-Chang, an independent journalist and LGBT rights advocate in Boise, while executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, Fischer hosted anti-gay activist Scott Lively, former head of AFA's California affiliate, as part of a "Shake the Nation" conference, in 2008. In his new book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, Jeff Sharlet describes Lively as a "catalyst" for the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which calls for the death penalty for homosexuals. During a 2009 visit to Uganda, Lively likened gay people to Nazis and suggested they had instigated the Rwandan genocide. In early 2009, One News Now promoted Lively's book, Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the Gay Agenda, as a "textbook on family values." On his radio show this year, Fischer claimed that criminalization of homosexuality was mandated by biblical law.
The Lively visit to Boise sparked a "visceral response" from the community, said May-Chang, including a letter from the Interfaith Alliance of Idaho, calling on a local church hosting the conference speakers to reconsider. Rusty Thomas, also a Shake the Nation conference speaker who works with the radical anti-choice group Operation Save America, referred to the Interfaith Alliance in an online report as "the synagogue of Satan and heresy." In the report, Thomas claimed his group was "storming the gates of hell in Idaho," where they "went to the local death camp" (Planned Parenthood), and described the "sodomites" who protested outside the church where the conference was held. Thomas added that they "challenged the Church, and particularly men, to connect their testosterone with Biblical Christianity."
In an online column, Fischer defended Lively's preposterous and debunked "history" of a Nazi-gay link, claiming "the masculine homosexual movement in Germany created the Brown Shirts, and the Brown Shirts in turn created the Nazi Party." In a column earlier this year opposing repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, Fischer recycled that 2008 column, adding, "Even today in America, it is chic in some homosexual circles for individuals to wear replicas of Nazi Germany uniforms, complete with iron crosses, storm trooper outfits, military boots and even swastikas."
Speaking of Fischer, May-Chang added, "I would venture to say that he would've joined Scott Lively in Uganda if he could've." Calling him "an embarrassment to fair-minded Idahoans," May-Chang said that his writings while in Idaho made clear that he favored criminalization of homosexuality. She maintains a dossier of Fischer's radical homophobia on her website.
All three former AFA employees who spoke with RD said they were happier no longer working there. Martin has started a blog, where he hopes to spark conversation among Christians about how their message is being "presented, perceived, and received."
"I'd much rather be working in the secular world than for a ministry," said Swindle. "The secular world is nicer." Sarah Posner, author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, is RD’s associate editor and covers politics for the site. Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Nation, Salon, The Washington Spectator, the religion blogs at the Washington Post and the Guardian, and other publications
What has been the toll on youth in Venango County and all of Pennsylvania due to the climate of fear, ignorance and hatred stirred by the likes of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, the Catholic and other area churches, indifferent / intolerant school administrators, and all those whose hearts are too cold and closed to a just and humane world?
FRESNO, Calif. — When Seth Walsh was in the sixth grade, he turned to his mother one day and told her he had something to say.
“I was folding clothes, and he said, ‘Mom, I’m gay,’ ” said Wendy Walsh, a hairstylist and single mother of four. “I said, ‘O.K., sweetheart, I love you no matter what.’ ”
But last month, Seth went into the backyard of his home in the desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., and hanged himself, apparently unable to bear a relentless barrage of taunting, bullying and other abuse at the hands of his peers. After a little more than a week on life support, he died last Tuesday. He was 13.
The case of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after a sexual encounter with another man was broadcast online, has shocked many. But his death is just one of several suicides in recent weeks by young gay teenagers who had been harassed by classmates, both in person and online.
The list includes Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old from Greensburg, Ind., who hanged himself on Sept. 9 after what classmates reportedly called a constant stream of invective against him at school.
Less than two weeks later, Asher Brown, a 13-year-old from the Houston suburbs, shot himself after coming out. He, too, had reported being taunted at his middle school, according to The Houston Chronicle. His family has blamed school officials as failing to take action after they complained, something the school district has denied.
The deaths have set off an impassioned — and sometimes angry — response from gay activists and caught the attention of federal officials, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who on Friday called the suicides “unnecessary tragedies” brought on by “the trauma of being bullied.”
“This is a moment where every one of us — parents, teachers, students, elected officials and all people of conscience — needs to stand up and speak out against intolerance in all its forms,” Mr. Duncan said.
And while suicide by gay teenagers has long been a troubling trend, experts say the stress can be even worse in rural places, where a lack of gay support services — or even openly gay people — can cause a sense of isolation to become unbearable.
“If you’re in the small community, the pressure is hard enough,” said Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which is based in New York. “And goodness knows people get enough signals about ‘how wrong it is to be gay’ without anyone in those communities actually having to say so.”
According to a recent survey conducted by Ms. Byard’s group, nearly 9 of 10 gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual middle and high school students suffered physical or verbal harassment in 2009, ranging from taunts to outright beatings.
In Mr. Clementi’s case, prosecutors in New Jersey have charged two fellow Rutgers freshmen with invasion of privacy and are looking at the death as a possible hate crime. Prosecutors in Cypress, Tex., where Asher Brown died, said Friday that they would investigate what led to his suicide.
In a pair of blog postings last week, Dan Savage, a sex columnist based in Seattle, assigns the blame to negligent teachers and school administrators, bullying classmates and “hate groups that warp some young minds and torment others.”
“There are accomplices out there,” he wrote Saturday.
In an interview, Mr. Savage, who is gay, said he was particularly irate at religious leaders who used “antigay rhetoric.”
“The problem is that kids are being exposed to this rhetoric, and then they go to the school and there’s this gay kid,” he said. “And how are they going to treat this gay kid who they’ve been told is trying to destroy their family? They’re going to abuse him.”
In late September, Mr. Savage began a project on YouTube called “It Gets Better,” featuring gay adults talking about their experiences with harassment as adolescents.
In one video, a gay man named Cyrus tells of his life as a closeted teenager in a small town in upstate New York.
“The main thing I wanted to come across from this video is how different my life is, how great my life is, and how happy I am in general,” he says.
Glennda Testone, the executive director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City, said their youth programs serve about 50 young people a day, often suffering from “bullying, harassment or even violence.”
“The three main groups of pivotal figures are family, friends and their schoolmates,” she said. “And if they’re feeling isolated and like they can’t tell those people, it’s going to be a very rough ride.”
Here in Fresno, in California’s conservative Central Valley, groups like Equality California have been more active in trying to establish outreach offices, particularly after an election defeat in 2008, when California voters approved Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.
In Tehachapi, in Kern County south of here, more than 500 mourners attended a memorial on Friday for Seth Walsh. One of those, Jamie Elaine Phillips, a classmate and friend, said Seth had long known he was gay and had been teased for years.
“But this year it got much worse,” Jamie said. “People would say, ‘You should kill yourself,’ ‘You should go away,’ ‘You’re gay, who cares about you?’ ”
Richard L. Swanson, superintendent of the local school district, said his staff had conducted quarterly assemblies on behavior, taught tolerance in the classroom and had “definite discipline procedures that respond to bullying.”
“But these things didn’t prevent Seth’s tragedy,” he said in an e-mail. “Maybe they couldn’t have.”
For her part, Ms. Walsh said she had complained about Seth’s being picked on but did not want to cast blame, though she hoped his death would teach people “not to discriminate, not be prejudiced.”
“I truly hope,” she said, “that people understand that.”
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out expressed a sense of deep sorrow and loss as news of three gay teen suicides in September rocked the LGBT movement. In each case, the victim was a target of relentless harassment and bullying by school peers. Truth Wins Out blames the anti-gay industry and negligent school officials for creating a hostile climate that places lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students at risk for psychological abuse, violence and suicide. “Our hearts go out to the families of these young men and we feel a deep sense of sorrow and regret for these needless tragedies,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We blame the anti-gay industry for fighting measures to end bullying in schools, and school officials who turn a blind eye to brutality. We are fed up with what amounts to anti-gay schoolyard muggings that are foolishly dismissed as ‘boys being boys’. In reality, it is ‘boys beating boys’, and these bullies receive tacit approval for their violent, homophobic behavior by teachers and certain vocal segments of society.”
Through their annual “Day of Truth” campaign and TrueTolerance.org web site, Focus on the Family and the “ex-gay” group Exodus International actively and continuously obstruct anti-bullying programs in schools across the country. Instead of opposing violence, both organizations remain dedicated to pretending the problem of anti-gay bullying does not exist, or downplaying the deadly results. “The goal of Exodus International and Focus on the Family is to purge LGBT people from society, although they disingenuously frame the issue as eliminating homosexuality, which is not possible,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “When you target homosexuality, the result is persecution and punishment of LGBT people, and in many cases it leads to gay bashing or suicides. The anti-gay industry should dismantle these despicable programs and work towards creating solutions instead of suicides.”
In September, there have been three gay teen suicides as a result of school bullying:
* Seth Walsh, the Bakersfield, CA 13-year-old who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied, died Tuesday afternoon after nine days on life support. Police investigators interviewed some of the young people who taunted Seth the day he hanged himself. “Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears,” Police Chief Jeff Kermode said. “They had never expected an outcome such as this.”
* Asher Brown, 13, an eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District in Houston Texas. Brown, his family said, was “bullied to death” — picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class, his mother and stepfather said.
* Billy (William) Lucas, 15, a student at Greensburg Community High School in Greensburg, IN, was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home Thursday evening — he had hanged himself. Friends say that he had been tormented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation.
“This insanity must stop and all school districts must commit to making school safe for LGBT students,” said TWO’s Besen. “It is inexcusable and unconscionable that bullying is tolerated in this day and age. Those responsible for allowing such tragedies to occur should be held responsible.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their misinformation and exposes their leaders as charlatans. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
Fairness and Equality Proclamation Signed by Oil City Council
City council members signed a proclamation Monday night that designated the day (Sept. 13) as Joe Wilson Day. The tribute refers to former Oil City resident Joe Wilson who with his partner Dean Hamer, directed and produced the award winning film “Out in the Silence.”
The film celebrates diverse lifestyles and was shot in Oil City and the surrounding area.
“Joe Wilson’s film shows Oil City to the rest of the country as a town capable of positive change and documents progress in fair and equal treatment for all people in this community,” notes the proclamation.
Council was asked in June by local resident George Cooley to adopt a formal human rights policy and to embrace Wilson’s film on tolerance in small towns. The documentary tells the story of a gay high school student and explores small-town reaction to same-sex marriage.
"Many important topics were discussed at last night's City Council meeting," said Colley, "but we were proud to see the Oil City Council sign the proclamation. This is a first step in a marketing attitude toward our city. It is also a step towards a progressive Human Rights Initiative."
Diane Gramley sat peacefully behind Robert Wagner in the Coudersport Public Library as the retired physician shared his views on transgender individuals with the assembled audience. “I'm gonna put a ball bat in my car,” he said, “and if I ever see a guy [Wagner refuses to use proper pronouns] coming out of a bathroom that my granddaughter's in, I'm gonna use the ball bat on him.”
Moments later he added: “In the good old days, before 'she-males' existed, they just called such people perverts.”
Gramley is no stranger to such ideas. As President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association, a 'traditional family values' organization based in Mississippi, she spends much of her time planting similar seeds of suspicion about the dangers posed by “men who think they are women,” her disparaging term for transgender females. She also crusades relentlessly against what she and the AFA call the “homosexual agenda” and the type of legal protections that her and Dr. Wagner's threatening rhetoric suggests are needed for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Gramley was in Coudersport, a small town of 2,600 residents in the sparsely populated north-central part of the state known as the Pennsylvania Wilds, as a special guest of Dr. Wagner for what he titled “A Bible Believing Christian's Response to OUT IN THE SILENCE,” my documentary film about the quest for inclusion, fairness and equality for LGBT people in the small town where I was born and raised, Oil City, PA, just a two-hour drive from Coudersport.
Gramley, who also happens to call the Oil City area home, plays a central role in OUT IN THE SILENCE as a result of the firestorm of controversy she helped to ignite in opposition to the publication of my same-sex marriage announcement in the local paper. It was that controversy that compelled my partner, Dean Hamer, and I to go back to my hometown with our cameras to document what life is like there for LGBT people, and to show hopeful and inspiring stories about the growing movement for equality.
The film was produced in partnership with Penn State Public Broadcasting, received support from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, and has been broadcast on PBS stations around the country. We're now using it as an educational tool in a grassroots campaign to help raise LGBT visibility and to bring people together in small towns like Oil City and Coudersport to begin building bridges across the gaps that have divided families, friends, and entire communities on these issues for far too long.
As part of this campaign, OUT IN THE SILENCE had screened just a month earlier for a standing-room-only crowd in the Coudersport Public Library despite vehement opposition from Dr. Wagner and the efforts of the local Tea Party and a small group of fundamentalist preachers to shut the event down and have the library 'de-funded' for making its space available for such a program.
Wagner's “Bible Believing Response,” he told the crowd of approximately 60 local church people, “was intended to expose the filmmakers’ real agenda and to question the directors’ assertion that the community should tolerate alternative lifestyles.”
During the two hour program, Wagner asked special guest Gramley a few questions about her experiences as a minor subject of the film, but he used her more as a prop, seated silently behind him, providing an odd sort of legitimacy as he put forth offensive theories and mischaracterizations about LGBT people, including that “AIDS is the gay plague” and “gays can't have families.”
Dean and I were in the library for the presentation. We made the six-hour drive to Coudersport from our home in Washington, DC because I wanted to bear witness to this event, to experience for myself, if only for a few hours, what it feels like to be so close to such willful ignorance and brazen cruelty.
As I sat there, listening to 'amens,' snickering laughter, and even a roar of approval from the people around me when asked if they agree with the AFA assertions that there “should be legal sanctions against homosexual behavior” and “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office,” I felt a sadness unlike any I have known before. A sadness for those who fall prey to such bigoted and hostile bombast, who carry the feelings these things stir into their homes and family relationships, and for the communities that suffer the sometimes-violent consequences of such mean-spirited divisiveness.
But as I looked at Gramley, unmoved next to Wagner, condoning the ugliness without a word of protest, I thought of all the courageous people who have attended OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign events over the past many months in far flung places, including there in Coudersport, who refuse to be silent anymore, who are working for change in their communities against great odds, and I was inspired all over again.
It is in their spirit that we will continue our campaign to speak out in the silence and to help build the movement for fairness and equality in small towns and rural communities across America.
Sexual abuse allegations .. were made about the late Donald Davis, a former Episcopalian bishop.
By Sheila Boughner for The Derrick (Oil City, PA)
Rowe Rowe Nine women have come forward to say they were sexually abused or sexually harassed by a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania.
The Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, bishop of the Erie-based diocese and former rector of St. John Episcopal Church in Franklin, announced in early July that four women had made credible allegations that as girls they were sexually abused by the late Donald Davis, bishop of the diocese from 1974- 91.
Rowe asked any other women who may be have been abused by Davis to come forward, and quickly heard from five more women.
Rowe said in mid-July that he would provide an update on the situation at the end of the summer, and in a letter to the members of the diocese’s 34 churches released Sunday, Rowe said no additional women have come forward.
Of the five women who did come forward, three said they were sexually abused by Davis when they were girls and two others said they were “harassed and intimidated” by Davis when they were adults, Rowe said.
According to the initial allegations, two of the girls were abused at a diocesan summer camp in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and two were abused repeatedly over a period of years. Rowe said in an interview that the girls were about 10 at the time of the alleged incidents.
“I have had conversations with all five of the women who contacted me since my invitation in early July, and they have told me their only interest in coming forward has been in helping me arrive at a fuller picture of the scope of Bishop Davis’s abuse,” Rowe said in his letter Sunday.
He said he has also been in contact with the bishops of other dioceses where Davis served as a priest or lived in retirement and will speak further with those bishops at this week’s House of Bishops meeting in Phoenix, Ariz.
Rowe urged any others who may have been victimized by Davis to come forward.
Rowe wrote that while he cannot undo the past, he can do his best “to ensure that this diocese continues to tell the truth and seek healing and reconciliation for those who have been harmed.”
“I believe that our diocese now has a particular responsibility to observe the highest possible standards in dealing with the issue of sexual misconduct,” Rowe wrote.
He said the diocese is intensifying the education and training of all clergy, staff and volunteers who work with children and has strengthened its misconduct policy.
“Even as we seek healing for the past, we will also dedicate ourselves to ensuring that the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania is a place where children are respected and nurtured, where people can come with their deepest wounds and vulnerabilities and be safe, and where we show the power of God’s love to all among whom we live and serve,” Rowe wrote.
When he first announced the abuse claims in July, Rowe indicated that while church officials were aware of the allegations against Davis as early as 1993 and removed Davis as bishop in 1994, the matter was never made public, possibly because several of the women specifically asked that their situations not be revealed.
Rowe, however, decided to take the matter public.
“Christians tell the truth,” he said in an interview. “That’s what we need to be doing. Repentance means that when you are in the wrong, you have to make amends and be willing to change. And we can t do that unless we name what we have done.”
Davis, who died in 2007 at the age of 78, was born in New Castle, but was raised in Frederick, Md., before returning to northwestern Pennsylvania to attend Westminster College.
He graduated from Westminster in 1949 and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1952. He was ordained in 1955 and later received a master’s degree from Bowling Green University and an honorary doctorate from Westminster.
He served in several dioceses in Washington, Indianapolis and Ohio before he was elected the sixth bishop of the Northwest Pennsylvania diocese.
The diocese covers 13 counties in northwest Pennsylvania and includes St. John Episcopal Church in Franklin, Christ Church in Oil City, Christ Church in Meadville, St. James Church in Titusville, Church of the Epiphany in Grove City and Memorial Church of Our Father in Foxburg.
Rowe, who at 35 is the youngest bishop in the Episcopal Church, was rector at St. John’s in Franklin for seven years prior to becoming bishop of the diocese in 2007. He also served on the Franklin School Board.
A Bradford woman has been sentenced to state prison for biting off her boyfriend's ear during a domestic dispute.
27-year-old Erin Moore will spend 19½ to 51 months in state prison for the incident that happened in May at Kiwanis Court.
District Attorney Ray Learn says the stiff sentence was prompted by Moore's history, which includes an incident when she attacked an ex-boyfriend with a baseball bat.
Learn also says a child was present when she bit off her Roger Kline’s ear.
Gay marriage is not going away as a highly emotional, contested issue. Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that bans same-sex marriage, has seen to that, as it winds its way through the federal courts.
But perhaps the public has reached a turning point.
A CNN poll this month found that a narrow majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage — the first poll to find majority support. Other poll results did not go that far, but still, on average, showed that support for gay marriage had risen to 45 percent or more (with the rest either opposed or undecided).
That’s a big change from 1996, when Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. At that time, only 25 percent of Americans said that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry, according to an average of national polls.
The more important turning points in public opinion, however, may be occurring at the state level, especially if states continue to control who can get married.
According to our research, as recently as 2004, same-sex marriage did not have majority support in any state. By 2008, three states had crossed the 50 percent line. *
Today, 17 states are over that line (more if you consider the CNN estimate correct that just over 50 percent of the country supports gay marriage).
In 2008, the year Proposition 8 was approved, just under half of Californians supported same-sex marriage,. Today, according to polls, more than half do. A similar shift has occurred in Maine, where same-sex marriage legislation was repealed by ballot measure in 2009.
In both New York and New Jersey, where state legislatures in the past have defeated proposals to allow same-sex marriage, a majority now support it.
And support for same-sex marriage has increased in all states, even in relatively conservative places like Wyoming and Kentucky. Only Utah is still below where national support stood in 1996.
Among the five states that currently allow same-sex marriage, Iowa is the outlier. It is the only one of those states where support falls below half, at 44 percent.
This trend will continue. Nationally, a majority of people under age 30 support same-sex marriage. And this is not because of overwhelming majorities found in more liberal states that skew the national picture: our research shows that a majority of young people in almost every state support it. As new voters come of age, and as their older counterparts exit the voting pool, it’s likely that support will increase, pushing more states over the halfway mark.
By ANDREW GELMAN, JEFFREY LAX and JUSTIN PHILLIPS, professors of political science at Columbia University.
By Dean Hamer & Joe Wilson, with introduction by Bill Lichtenstein, for The Huffington Post:
The US District Court decision on August 4, overturning California's Proposition 8 and its ban on same sex marriages was a watershed moment for proponents of equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans.
Within hours of the landmark decision, pundits ranging from MSNBC's liberal Rachel Maddow to Fox's ultra-right wing Glenn Beck, began postulating that the ruling signaled a new "post-homophobic" era in America.
Maddow, who among news anchors may well be America's most trusted lesbian, led her show for the two nights after the decision with celebratory coverage of the ruling. She went so far as to taunt GOP leaders for being uncharacteristically quiet during the 24 hours after the US District Court decision.
Speaking presumably to Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and John Boehner, among others, Maddow asked at the top of her August 5 program, "Where were the outraged Republicans? Where are you? You guys used to be so good at this."
At the same time, Glenn Beck, who is to liberal causes what "Mikey" was to breakfast foods in the 1970s Life cereal ads ("he hates everything"), turned heads by telling Fox's Bill O'Reilly that "I don't think marriage, that the government actually has anything to do with . . . [what] is a religious right," and then added a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?"
In the wake of the decision, both sides held their breath as Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker gave opponents of the ruling six days to appeal it. On August 16, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals left in place Prop 8 and its same sex marriage ban in California, as the case winds its way through its appeal process toward the Supreme Court, where it may ultimately be decided. Depsite forcing Golden State gay and lesbian couples to put their nuptial plans on hold, this delay has one possible plus for same sex marriage proponents.
Loyola Law School professor Richard Hasen told the LA Times , that "If this case takes another year to get to the U.S. Supreme Court, there could be more states that adopt same-sex marriage and more judicial opinions that reach that conclusion."
In fact, despite the dramatic victory in the federal court, the battle over same sex marriages in the US continues to rage at the state and local levels.
Streak of "31 Straight Victories" Brought to an End
Over the past decade, gay marriage opponents have racked up an impressive winning streak of 31 straight victories against no defeats when the issue of same sex marriages has been on the ballot in state elections. Loss number 31 was in Maine, on November 3, 2009, when voters repealed a law that had allowed gay unions. The 31-0 streak was brought to an abrupt end by Judge Walker's Prop 8 decision.
As recent events have been developing in San Francisco, filmmakers Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson have been traveling the country with their feature documentary film, Out in the Silence. The film captures the remarkable chain of events starting with the announcement of their wedding, which ignited a firestorm of controversy in the small Pennsylvania hometown Wilson left long ago.
The documentary tells the story of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights in rural America, and premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, was broadcast on PBS stations across the country, and has been shown at over 400 community and school screenings accompanied by public discussions.
Currently, Dean, who has worked for the past three decades at the National Institutes of Health, and received international attention after the journal "Science" published his research in 1993 that he had identified a "gay gene," and Joe, a human rights activist and native of Oil City, Pennsylvania, where the documentary takes place, are traveling with the film through all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, a state that prohibits same sex marriage.
The following is Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson's "dispatch from the front" regarding the latest battle in America's 2010 culture wars:
Plaintiffs Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier at federal courthouse.
"The images of the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case standing on the steps of the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco during the trial, were typical of the now standard media portrayal of gay America: out, proud, comfortably middle class, living in a big city or suburb.
But there is another side to gay America that is rarely seen. It takes place in conservative, often deeply religious small towns and rural communities where those who are found, or even perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, strive to fit in rather than to stand out. For these people coming out means risking their families, friends, jobs and livelihoods, their safety and at times even their very lives.
Our documentary film, Out in the Silence focuses on the harrowing, ultimately successful battle waged by a 16 year-old gay student and his mother against recalcitrant school authorities when the teen was brutally gay bashed for courageously coming out at his rural high school.
Filmmakers Hamer (L) and Wilson (R) in Oil City, Pennsylvania
We've reached half of our goal of screening the film in all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, and most of the events have been greeted with enthusiasm. But in Coudersport, a town of 2,650 people along the northern border of the state, we received an email from Keturah Cappadonia, a town librarian just two days before the scheduled screening informing us that the event would have to be canceled. The reason, as the Harrisburg Patriot-News later reported, was that 'after several hours of people pointing their fingers in her face and telling her she was going to hell, Keturah Cappadonia cracked' and was reduced to tears by the experience.
The controversy resulted from, no surprise, an alliance between fundamentalist Christians and right-wing conservatives. Pastor Pete Tremblay of the Coudersport Free Methodist Church told a local news web site that the film was 'designed to get people to give up their convictions based on the word of God and accept these practices as equivalent to God's design for human sexuality. It is propaganda.'
Pastor Tremblay went on to request that people 'call the library...and in a Christian manner inform them that this event is not a benefit to our community, and ask that it be canceled.'
He was joined in his condemnation of the film by George Brown, president of the Potter County Tea Party, who said he was upset at having to be 'attacked for our beliefs at a public library we support with our tax money. This is wrong and cannot be tolerated.'
Brown also told the web site that $1.5 million of local taxes was used to support the library (the actual number is $42,000), and went on to say that 'Should this agenda be continued, we may need to ask if the library should be defunded.'Diane Gramley, head of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania
That appeared to be one threat over the line for the library board. Following a quick phone meeting, they unanimously decided that the screening would go ahead as originally planned and issued a public statement for the library patrons:
The mission of any public library is to serve a diverse community with varying opinions about what is and is not objectionable material . . . We believe the library would fail in its mission if it did not provide information about ideas or topics that each of us might find uncomfortable at some level . . . American libraries are the cornerstone of our democracy. Libraries are for everyone, everywhere.
And so two days later, on the evening of July 28, 2010, a standing room only crowd gathered in Coudersport's public library, made up of mainstream members of the community along with lesbian, gay, bisexual and heterosexual, transgender and cisgender, young, middle-aged and senior citizens, together with a goodly handful of reporters, all gathered together in a public place and ready to talk about a subject that had divided their community for far too long.
As soon as the film was over, one of the opponents in the room quickly rose and read from a long list of objections to the film, including that 'most homosexuals are very well off.' Another spoke at length of his belief that homosexuality is against 'God's word.'
But then, gradually, slowly and often in tears, the LGBT folks and their family members, friends and allies began to recount their personal experiences.
A teenager described how he had been harassed at school when his classmates discovered his father was gay. 'I didn't understand why my friends turned their backs on me,' he said. 'To accept everyone is the only way to go about living.'
Then the teen's father - a local business owner, Episcopal Vestry member and former Republican Party Chair - spoke of the acceptance he has quietly gained over his 30 years in the town.
Another young man, visibly nervous, publicly announced for the first time that he was proud to be both gay and Christian, even though his church had rejected him. That prompted a local minister to stand and announce that her church was supportive of LGBT people and would serve as a resource for those who wanted a welcoming spiritual home.
When a woman with a small child in her arms offered to make a financial donation to the library to offset any losses due to the screening, she was greeted by a solid burst of applause.
The topic of marriage equality was never even mentioned. But audience members did circulate a sign-up sheet for people who wanted to work with one another and Equality Partners of Western Pennsylvania to try and make Coudersport a more welcoming and tolerant place. By the time the event was over, the majority of the people in the room had signed up.
While it was painful, even frightening to observe the open hostility of the handful of individuals who attempted to stop the meeting from occurring, and then to disrupt the conversation with angry diatribes and personal attacks, people in the community have told us that it was actually useful that it all took place in full light of day because it revealed the seriousness of the problems that LGBT people face, often alone and without any networks of personal or legal support in such an environment.
The other screenings throughout Pennsylvania, which has a law on the books prohibiting same sex marriage, drew good crowds of local LGBT people and allies including educators, social workers and business owners, but only one minister showed up, in Emporium, PA. After watching the movie he took off his white collar and placed it in his shirt pocket. 'Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be associated with the clergy in this area,' he said. 'My religion is about faith, not about hate.'
OUT IN THE SILENCE, a documentary film about the quest for fairness & equality for LGBT people in small towns & rural communities, just received the most important honor imaginable, recognition from the Oil City Arts Council, an amazing organization and group of people working for change in the very community portrayed in the film.
Our gratitude will be shown at each and every screening as we continue to share news of the great efforts underway in Oil City to help make it, and the surrounding area, more welcoming and inclusive of all who wish to call it home!
Text of Letter:
OIL CITY ARTS COUNCIL August 5, 2010
Dear Joe,
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Oil City Arts Council, I am sending our deep appreciation to you for the sensitivity and sense of community that you expressed in your film, OUT IN THE SILENCE. We feel that the film portrays Oil City in a very favorable light with regard to the interpersonal relationships and personal concern for human rights displayed by our residents.
We hope that you will feel welcome to visit Oil city often and that every opportunity will be taken to show your film to new audiences.
We send our congratulations on your artistic achievement with OUT IN THE SILENCE and wish you success as you continue your creative endeavors.
As the facts about the recent OUT IN THE SILENCE screening in Coudersport continue to come out, the controversy that Diane Gramley of the American Family Assoc. of PA and her new-found-friends-in-bigotry, such as the "reporter" at the Cruddy News blog site, are trying to whip up is just making them look like out-of-touch extremists.
The truth hurts.
But what hurts more is hearing about and seeing the pain that such activist-bigotry causes real people in real communities, like beautiful Coudersport.
Fortunately, as this article helps reveal, these real people are getting sick-and-tired of those who misuse religion to support their "family-values" crusades and are starting to speak out, and organize, for change in the silence of rural and small town America.
There was little silence following the showing of the documentary film “Out In The Silence” on Wednesday evening at the Coudersport Public Library.
A heated question-and-answer session emanated from the middle of the library that featured plenty of vitriol being thrown around the room in the form of questions of acceptance, deterring discrimination and even attacks on the library in the form of patrons no longer donating to help fund the organization because the film was shown.
About 80 residents attended the showing.
The film documents the struggle of a gay teen in rural Pennsylvania and was shown to a packed house that drew moments of laughter during the movie and moments of tension following.
Coudersport resident Bob Wagner opened the question-and-answer session with statements regarding the standing of gays and lesbians in society.
“I think the lesbians, gays, transsexuals and trans genders are doing quite well in America,” Wagner said. “June 21, USA Today talks about the gay teen girl that couldn’t take her girlfriend to the prom. She was honored in the White House by Barack Obama. The week before you were honored in New York with the annual gay parade endorsed by the mayor, and, of course, you have one in San Francisco endorsed by the mayor. You have the highest per capita income of any group in America. I don’t think you’re doing too bad. Are you ever going to be happy?”
While Wagner stated what he feels is a good standing of gays and lesbians in the community, he also made it clear he disagreed with their lifestyle choice.
“There’s quite a gay community in Coudersport and I think they are doing quite well,” Wagner said. “In spite of my statements here, I think you will find most of them I am on speaking terms with even though I disagree with their beliefs.”
Drawing the ire of the crowd, Wagner gave one final comment regarding his own plans for a forum.
“I am renting the Coudersport Public Library and I will be speaking and giving some more insight to the other side of the agenda,” Wagner said.
According to Wagner, everyone is invited to attend the event.
Joe Wilson, co-director and co-producer of the film, made a valiant attempt to calm what was quickly becoming a volatile environment.
“There seem to be some who do not want an open, public forum,” Wilson said. “That is what we are trying to deal with. We are going to try to be patient. We’re going to try to be respectful and make sure that everybody that wants to join in this conversation has the opportunity to do so.”
A woman from the crowd stated she felt what the library and Wilson and his partner in the film, Dean Hamer, have done in purveying a clear message is a good thing, inciting clapping from the capacity crowd.
“The film speaks to the issues many young people, in particular, experience in our school systems,” Wilson said. “The big question is how are the schools, parents, community equipped to address the situation. I don’t know what the situation is here in Potter County.”
Marty Montgomery, a pastor from the First Baptist Church of Roulette, then questioned Wilson and Hamer about the film and their ideals.
“I understand you folks want to improve the dialog between the gay and lesbian community and those who are not – at least I assume you do,” Montgomery said. “What I saw was what I consider gunpowder-type rhetoric. You said the library and yourselves were attacked and threatened. Would you tell me exactly what [occurred?]”
Wilson responded, “We read there were reports people were threatening to have the library de-funded.”
Montgomery then questioned Wilson as to the library losing funding being a threat to which Wilson gave a one-word answer, “Yes.”
On the issue of discrimination happening in schools and being a problem in Coudersport, Jessica Bonczar was quick to offer her own life experiences growing up in town.
“I’ve grown up here and I went to high school with several people that were gay,” Jessica Bonczar said. “I would like to say [discrimination] is an issue here. While I might not be gay, I watched some of my closest friends be bullied, harassed, threatened, treated like garbage. It is an issue here. It is. It is an issue everywhere. It is a human rights issue. This sort of thing is about intellectual freedom. People should be able to come together and have this sort of forum and discussion in a very civil manner. It is an issue here.”
Bonczar also addressed the library funding issue that was raised prior to the showing of the film.
“I have raised money for this library actively for years now, and it is a threat to have it de-funded,” Jessica Bonczar said. “We are struggling to stay afloat here. It is a threat.”
For Jaimi Bonczar, the film could be the starting point of understanding what gays and lesbians sometimes go through in small towns and teaching tolerance and acceptance.
“I went to high school here probably, well, 10 years ago,” Jaimi Bonczar said. “I also went to school with people who were harassed. This is a public forum. We all chose to be here. I think this could be a great place to start talking about this, how we can better support our own community. Be open-minded, be friendly to everybody. Our small town is just as important to me as the rest of the people. In our community, we care about each other – all of us, not just some of us. I really appreciate what you’ve done.”
Montgomery then interjected his own beliefs that homosexuality is the rejection of God’s word.
“In order for me to concede that the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable, then I have to decide that God’s word must be rejected,” Montgomery said. “That is the decision. I am referring to the Bible. Nobody is going to be able to take the Bible and say homosexuality is sin – you just can’t do that. All you can do is reject it or say, ‘Well I don’t take it literally.’ This is what I am asking. Is it OK with you, if I continue to believe God?”
Hamer fully supported Montgomery’s statement.
“Yes, absolutely, and if you do not want to be gay yourself and you do not believe in homosexuality for yourself or for people at your church, that is absolutely fine,” Hamer said.
Wilson then interjected that during the showing of the film storms that had passed through the area produced a rainbow.
Rev. Evon McJunkin, who has served in the area for 23 years at the First United Presbyterian Church, offered support to those seeking literature on homosexuality and Christianity.
“If there are folks that would like resources in support of homosexuality, I have them for you. I believe that God loves and accepts gays and there is evidence of scripture of that,” McJunkin said.
For Don Caskey of Austin, the plight of being homosexual in a small town is one that caused those he called friends to turn their back when they learned of his lifestyle choice.
“I grew up in Austin and I grew up as a gay man,” Caskey said. “I can’t believe I just said that out loud because there was a time in my life that was the worst thing I could have ever said.
“I told one other person that I was gay, and like what happens in small towns it went through a wildfire throughout the town. I grew up very active in the Methodist church there. I have lots of friends. I was very active in that church. A lot of people supported me, but the people that considered themselves the most religious wrote me horrible letters.
“ The people who I considered some of my closest friends who were very active in that church showed their love for me by not coming to the funeral when my parents died, by not talking to me for 25 years simply for the fact I am gay. I stand before you saying you can believe whatever you want, but you are not showing your love, the love of Christ, unless you are reaching out to everyone – and that includes those who believe differently from you. I would encourage everybody to reach out and love everyone.”
For Kevin Eukon of Coudersport, he wouldn’t change his choice of growing up and living here.
“I feel very fortunate that I come from a town like Coudersport,” Eukon said. “I grew up here and came out of the closet in 1982, 1983. There have been moments of discrimination in my life, but one thing I have noticed about this town that makes it such a unique, wonderful place to live is when things started to get out of hand the town fathers always pressed them down.
“ I don’t see the discrimination here. There are pockets of it here and there are pockets of it anywhere. I think one thing Coudersport has is a decent community full of decent people and when the discrimination or the nastiness gets too out of hand there has always been a town father that has helped me through it or helped take care of it or addressed the situation. I think we are very fortunate to live in a town like Coudersport.”
For one local youth, being the son of gay parents was a trying experience, but one he wouldn’t trade for the world.
“When I was a kid up until sixth grade everything was cool and my parents were just my parents,” the boy said. “At the end of the sixth grade, we got the word ‘gay.’ Then my parents became ‘gay’ parents and my friends stopped being my friends. They call me gay. I didn’t understand why my friends turned their backs on me. But, there is nothing I can do to change my parents. They are gonna be gay and I have to let them be gay. I’m not gonna be like, ‘Dad, I hate you.’ I’m not going to change them. To accept everyone is the only way to go about living. You can point the finger all you want, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere in the end.”
