Warren Throckmorton

Actually, the article reports on various responses from evangelicals to the Day of Silence with mention of the DOS, Day of Truth, Golden Rule Pledge and the proposed DOS walkout.

Students Encouraged to Skip School on ‘Day of Silence’
By Lawrence Jones
A national coalition of pro-family groups are urging parents to keep their students home this coming Friday in protest of the annual “Day of Silence,” when students vow silence to bring attention to the discrimination of gay students.
Over 20 Christian-based conservative groups have called for the massive walkout from middle and high schools participating the April 17 event, arguing that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)’s sponsored event politicizes the classroom to support the belief that homosexuality is moral. They include state chapters of American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Illinois Family Institute, Liberty Council and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays.
“This day is not about ‘tolerance’ as it claims, but about forcing propaganda and acceptance of high-risk behavior into the schools with no opposing views allowed,” said Linda Harvey of Mission America, which also supports the walkout.
Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute said that while “all of civilized society must oppose bullying,” she opposes the “illegitimate means of using public education to affirm volitional homosexual behavior.”
Campaign for California Families said the demonstration will serve as financial “leverage” to get the message across, saying public schools in California lose $100 a day for each child absent.
The groups have encouraged parents and teens who are not willing to risk teacher retribution or missing school to send a letter to schools officials expressing their objections to Day of Silence.
The coalition has also called attention to a resolution sitting before Congress that would urge the federal government and public schools to officially recognize and celebrate Day of Silence. The legislation also requests that “the President issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe the National Day of Silence with appropriate ceremonies, programs, and activities.”
House Concurrent Resolution 92 was introduced on April 1 and has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.
GLSEN claims that over 8,000 students participated in last year’s Day of Silence. The organization says the observance is needed, pointing to its 2007 survey showing 86 percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation while 44 percent report being physically harassed.
The band of pro-family groups, meanwhile, says that by opposing the event they are in no way endorsing the bullying and harassment of those in the LGBT community.
One Christian professor, however, has come against the walkout, saying it’s not very productive.
“How can we get anything accomplished if we leave the field?” Dr. Warren Throckmorton, professor of Psychology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, wrote last week on his blog on Crosswalk.com.
The expert in mental health and sexuality issues contends that students taking part in Day of Silence have a point, saying he has spoken with Christian students who have admitted to bullying or harassing gay students.
Throckmorton has created an alternative response to Day of Silence, asking Christians to take The Golden Rule Pledge and show up at school to live out the teaching of Christ to treat others as they want to be treated.
When Day of Silence students hand out cards asking, “What will you do to help end the silence?” Christian students should respond: “This is what I am going to do. I pledge to treat others the way I want to be treated. ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.'”
Meanwhile, several other Christian-based conservative groups are promoting the Day of Truth on April 20, the following Monday, as a direct response to Day of Silence. According to Day of Truth’s Web site, it was established to “counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective.”
Alliance Defense Fund and Exodus International, the promoters of Day of Truth, are encouraging students to speak the “truth in love” and engage in conversation about homosexuality.
Participants are also asked to hand out cards reading: “I’m speaking the Truth to break the silence. True tolerance means that people with differing – even opposing – viewpoints can freely exchange ideas and respectfully listen to each other. It’s time for an honest conversation about homosexuality. There’s freedom to change if you want to. Let’s talk.”

For the record, I do not see the GRP as counterprogramming, but as an appropriate response to a request for respect and fair treatment. I simply cannot find any teaching in my religious tradition for walking away from people who are asking for respect.

An amazing vocal performance.

He is risen!

Not anyone I have written about before…
The rhetoric is getting so outrageous that I didn’t think any more societal ills could be blamed on gays but I was wrong. But Robert Peters of Morality in Media (Can the irony get any thicker?), put out a news release just now with this headline:
“Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders”
His news hook is the horrific shootings in Binghamton, NY where 14 people were killed, including the perpetrator of the crime. In the release, he says mass murderers and gay marriage stem from the same source – a post-Christian society. He says near the end of the release that he isn’t blaming the murders on gays:

It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

So why bring gays into it?
Most mass killings, as in this case, relate to mental illness, notably that involving thought disorders. His thesis is tired and in this release without a shred of substantiation. And then to use that awful situation in New York to bash gays takes it to a new level of immorality in media.
UPDATE: David Corn at Mother Jones weighs in…

Soon (April 17), the Day of Silence will be observed around the country and some conservative groups are not happy about it. A coalition featuring the American Family Association and the Concerned Women for America is suggesting students walkout of school to protest the disruption of silence by same-sex attracted students. Not a hint irony there, I tell you.
Again this year, I suggest an alternative to a walkout. Go on over to the Golden Rule Pledge and check out the plan there.
If you are on Facebook, you can join the initiative there as well. I will have more through the next several days, but I wanted to get the word out here today…

Scott Lively is not slowing down. He spoke recently to the Murrieta/Temecula Republican Assembly about his book, the Pink Swastika. This meeting was a slated for one venue but was moved due to worries about a possible protest from gay groups – in particular PFLAG.
The whole speech is now on YouTube via the account of the GOP group, Bob Kowell.

In this installment, Lively says he spoke to 10,000 people in Uganda. He also describes his battle with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Because of his advocacy of the thesis that homosexuals were behind the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, two groups he is involved with (Abiding Truth Ministries and Watchmen on the Walls) are on the SPLC list of hate groups.
In his speech, Mr. Lively has answered back his critics at SPLC. He also recently launched a new blog called HateWatch Watch. He claims his groups are unfairly placed on the list.
I asked Grove City College colleague and history prof, JonDavid Wyneken, to evaluate Lively’s thesis. Dr. Wyneken pointed me to a couple of resources which help refute the idea that a homosexual cult was the organized, driving force behind Nazism. One is in a book by esteemed historian Richard Evans, titled, The Third Reich in Power. On pages 529-535, Evans provides information which gives necessary perspective. Specifically, Evans indicates that the Nazis toughened laws against homosexual contact and stepped up their arrests of homosexuals between 1936 to 1938. Evans notes,

“The raids and arrests were co-ordinated from 1 October 1936 by a new Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homsexuality and Abortion, building on the Gestapo department created to deal with the same area in the wake of the Roehm purge, which gave fresh impetus to the wave of persecutions.” (p. 533, 2005).

Dr. Wyneken also provided a link to a document published by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., by historian Geoffrey J. Giles. Note this brief excerpt describing the views of Himmler about homosexuals. Himmler was not gay. In his young adult years, Himmler read a book by an author – Hartner – and approved of the perspective.

Hartner’s thesis was that an unchecked expansion of the phenomenon of homosexuality would lead quite literally to the “destruction of mankind” (Untergang der Menschheit). He lost himself in speculation about a giant conspiracy, inspired of course by Jews, among whom there was “contrary to Hirschfeld’s assertion, a greater [proportion of homosexuals] by far than in the German population” as a whole. What was the aim of these Jewish homosexuals? They were trying to push Germany down the slippery slope of “increasing infertility” that the French had been sliding down for ages.
You may well wonder whether, if more homosexuals meant fewer babies, that would not have an equally or even more damaging effect on the “heavily homosexual” Jewish people. No, because they, and especially the hated Ostjuden, were still positively infused with a
Zionism that provided an unquenchable fuel for an “unbroken will to fertility” (ungebrochener Fruchtbarkeitswille). The heterosexual Jews would simply produce more babies. Germans lacked this sense of nationalistic mission. Hartner declared in a closing flourish to his chapter that this spread of homosexuality would “surely dig our
graves.” One can almost sense young Himmler (still only twenty-seven years old) shuddering in agreement with these sentiments.

I warn you this paper is not for the squeamish but it gives a perspective regarding homosexuality and the Nazis in contrast to that of Scott Lively. Giles makes it clear that homosexuals were not behind the Nazi movement but rather the victims of it.