When Christian Students Want A Special Day - Road to the Middle Class

IT’S ONE thing to have a “Day of Silence” that celebrates the difficulties and the angst of gay students. But it is quite another when Christian students want to observe a “Day of Truth.”

Writes Michael Johnson:

The idea of the “Day of Silence” is that students and educators go all day without talking, while flashing a card at those around them explaining that the quiet is their way of showing solidarity with the culturally-oppressed kids who get bullied “just for being who they are.”

It’s a wonderful idea. Everyone should have a day like that. Because we are all misunderstood and we all live under frightful pressure to conform.

Imagine what it is like for a conservative like me to live in “Baghdad”Jim McDermott’s Seattle. We could use a little surcease from liberal bullying around here, I can tell you.

But then Christian students requested a Day of Truth “with some thoughtful discussion of differing views – religious, scientific, social, personal – on homosexual behavior.” And that was different.

Requests for “Day of Truth” events are perfunctorily denied, students who initiate discussions or even wear philosophically provocative T-shirts quickly find themselves on the short list for detention, even suspension.

It’s part of a pattern. Liberal agenda events are fine. But don’t bring your conservative bigotry or your religion in here, pal.

Even when student protests don’t call for open discussions, debates, and conversation – as in the pro-life Days of Silent Solidarity, which focus on calling attention to abortion – educators and government officials move fast to shut down what are usually quiet, respectful, non-aggressive demonstrations.

The delicious thing about this is that students are getting a clear message. If you want to rebel, if you want to create a stink, if you want to really get the adults riled up, then there is one thing that really gets their goat.

Try to bring your religion into the government school.

Not your average, run-of-the-mill government-approved secular religion like civil rights, or feminism, or gay rights, or racial quotas. No. We are talking about the God thing.

They just cannot stand it. And that is strange, because we live under a constitution that says that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech...

But hey, it’s one law for us and another law for the peons.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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