As a researcher, you hate it when you come across a piece of evidence that proves against the theory/conclusion you are hoping to make. How I wish I could sweep it under the rug. Pretend I’ve never seen it. Plead ignorance. I hate being able to see both sides: Why can’t I just believe in “It Gets Better” and “The kids are more tolerant than before” and shut up?

Before I go off on a tangent, you roll your eyes “Here we go again!” and hit EXIT, please watch this. Just watch this video and we will be comforted to see Glass as Half Full.

THIS. Is what hope looks like.

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I also feel hopeful because for every Clint McCance, the anti-gay, hateful, douche-bag, offensive Arkansas school board member who is in a position to set an example and affect what goes on inside schools yet whose tirade on Facebook ignited a nation-wide outrage in the midst of suicides by gay teens, let’s hope that there is someone like Jay McDowell, a high school teacher in Michigan who asked a student to leave the classroom who walked in on Spirit Day announcing his disapproval of gays, and who subsequently got his hand slapped (one-day suspension without pay) when a parent wrote a complaint letter to the high school.

Psss. Andrea! This kid and this teacher from Ann Arbor, MI, absolutely make up for having to live with NO Costco within an-hour drive.

What Mr. McDowell did was what St. Charles High School in the Chicago area should have done yet was too risk-averse (i.e. BALL-less) when handling their own Spirit Day Controversy. I was still repressing my anger and feeling dejected about what went on at St. Charles High School when Elly sent this video to me. I feel so much better now that I have seen the face of hope and courage itself in such a young person.

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In case you are still wanting to hear some psychotic foaming that I am well-known for: Earlier this month at St. Charles High School, a few students showed up wearing t-shirts with “Straight Pride” on the front in defiance of the school’s participation in Ally Week. Not only that, on the back of those t-shirts were the famed bible verse condemning homosexual individuals to death. With the “first amendment” in mind, the school merely asked the students to cross out the bible verse with a Sharpie and wear a sweatshirt over the t-shirt.

The school congratulated itself on handling the matter well, stating that this was a good thing because it started a conversation.

I am puzzled because the whole “Ally Week” and Anti-bullying messaging thing was not enough to start a conversation on its own, and, based on the whole “it started a conversation” thing, I am assuming that previously it was not known that some students harbor anti-gay sentiments, and therefore their making such a strong statement with the t-shirts was the first time a “conversation” could be started, and that for the first time the students with anti-gay agenda were given the podium to air their points of view, ’cause, you know, what they must have expressed in the hallways, the gym, the cafeteria, the bathrooms, the buses, etc etc, do not really count.

I am also puzzled because, I am going to assume again, that the school has some sort of anti-racist policies in place since it’s going to be a bitch if you attract the attention (and ire) of ACLU by letting little racists off too easily. Imagine if the t-shirts were emblazoned with “White Pride”. Imagine if the students have walked into the school during the assembly commemorating African American History Month, demanding a month to be dedicated to White People “’cause it ain’t fair otherwise.”

Here is what Chicago Tribune columnist Erin Zorn has to say about this incident that unfortunately, imo, has not received enough attention and made enough waves nation-wide state-wide city-wide suburb-wide: (and I am beyond delighted to see someone from Chicago Tribune making a strong stand regarding something that matters!)

“Gay Pride” is an antidote to gay shame — the sense of alienation and otherness in adolescence that prompted writer Dan Savage to start the It Gets Better project to reduce the incidence of suicide among gay teens; kids who kill themselves in part because they’re treated unmercifully by the sorts of peers who would wear shirts to school consigning them to being murdered at the command of an angry God.

And because there is no corresponding concept of straight shame, the expression “Straight Pride” can only be read as a gratuitous and contemptuous response to the suggestion that gay people not be marginalized.

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This under-reported incident at St. Charles High School found me shocked and dispirited because I have this ill-placed faith in our young people. (Sort of like how I was surprised to learn that there are gay or African American Republicans… What can I say? I am naive…)  I was misled by Pew Research Center‘s executive summary that the new generation is more tolerant than ever.

I forgot that MORE is a relative term.

Here is the reality of today’s teens as reported by Chicago Tribune this week: More tolerant than the older generations yet desensitized.

“The problem is that tolerance doesn’t necessarily mean understanding.”

Growing up with the encouragement to speak your mind, respect relativism, pursue your own truth, they (may) grow up with a false interpretation of First Amendment as “I can say whatever the F I want to say because less than that is not acceptable” and the blind belief that “everybody is entitled to his/her own opinion ergo I don’t have to listen to you because who’s to say your truth is better than mine?”

To this, I would like to give out t-shirts to all high schoolers with these words:

“The right to hold an opinion carries with it the responsibility to defend it*”

* Bible verses do not count as evidence. Thank you.