4.23.2008
Once you get past the abject hatred and disgust, the next in the anti-gay Bag O' Tricks is usually pity and patronization. "We love you sooooo much, we want to help you to be happier by encouraging you to be just like us instead of a miserable, emotionally crippled pervert!"
What's sort of pathetic is that this comes to them as some sort of great effort that will really and truly reveal the extent of their Christlike compassion for the poor, pathetic homosexuals. I bet it never even OCCURRED to them to just not be gay! Let's kill them with kindness instead of tire irons! Let's be the Good Cop instead of the Bad Cop! It's totally just like not stoning the adulteress!
Nice that they've finally decided to "love the sinner," but couldn't they just, you know, do so for once without banging on about "hating the sin" for ten times as long, and going to great lengths to make sure that everybody knows that they strongly disapprove of Homosexual Behavior even if, oh, well, it might not be terribly nice to beat them up for it? The day is supposed to be about bullying, not telling everybody that the bullies are just going about it the wrong way.
God forbid they just participate like everyone else without making a big fucking deal out of their oh-so-special disapproval. Then nobody will accidentally mistake them for Homosexual Activists, and they won't have to find out what it's actually like to be treated like a Homosexual, even for one damn day.
[edit, 4.28.08]
To clarify, the original post (which got too long and probably too profane to be a comment on the post from Box Turtle Bulletin that I linked) is about both the Day of Truth folks and the Golden Rule Pledge. Both of them are making the same mistake, though obviously the DoT are making it with considerably more gusto-- making their protest about their personal religious disapproval of Teh Homosexuality than about homophobic bullying, and in the case of the Golden Rule in particular, pretending that same disapproval isn't at the root of the bullying in the first case.
Consider the case of a run-of-the-mill straight ally participating in the DOS, and the "Golden Rule" allies-for-a-day participating. If I understand correctly, the point of the Golden Rule cards is to be able to hand them out while unable to speak. The regular straight ally is just going to be treated like a gay person, since of course only queers would stoop to standing up for queers, while the Golden Rule folks have this nifty card which says "Oh, I'm not GAY or ACCEPTING of Teh Gay, I just think Jesus wouldn't like it if we beat up people." It's, in effect, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a Band-aid on the fact that that same reluctance to be seen as supportive of the "gay agenda" is on the same continuum as those who take their reluctance to violent levels.
The way it's worded, I'm inclined to agree with Timothy that it's a very subtle way of setting up "Christian" in opposition to "homosexual" or "GLBT-affirming"-- you can paint yourself as being "against anti-gay violence 'cause violence is bad," without addressing the fact that quite a bit of that silencing is rooted in the way one regards homosexuality and Christianity as mutually exclusive.
If the Golden Rule folks are serious about wanting to combat anti-gay violence, for whatever reason, how about giving out their Golden Rule cards on the Day of Truth and just participating normally on the Day of Silence? Setting yourself up in opposition to the Christian mainstream "response" is a very different thing from making a special effort to differentiate yourself on the DoS, and if you're serious about wanting to make a break from the shitty way the Christian establishment treats GLBT folk, the former would make that point far more effectively.
Want to "break down the walls between the Christian and GLBT communities?" Ceasing to pretend that anyone other than the Christian establishment built that wall in the first place, and that it doesn't continue to supply the bricks, would be a nice first step.