(UPDATE: OMG. Tampa resident Michael Hussey of Pushing Rope has an even better pic of Brian at his pad; and a ton of additional information on him, including an ethics investigation.)
What is the Day of Silence?
The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. This year’s event will be held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed Feb. 12 by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. Hundreds of thousands of students will come together on April 25 to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair’s a Day of Silence hennypenny. He is the opponent of openly gay candidate Kevin Beckner, who is running for Blair’s seat. The county schools are participating in the Day of Silence, but as usual, the idea of kids engaging in a silent, passive act against violence, harassment and prejudice during the school day is just too much to bear for people of apparently weak faith.
I know what you’re thinking — what’s that about “Killer Bee”? Blair formerly tussled on the ropes as one of the WWE’s Killer Bees — take a look at this homo-fabulous pic of him in his bee suit with his partner.“I have always believed that all citizens are equal and should be treated accordingly. On the other hand, no group of citizens should be given government sanction and support to promote their social and sexual agenda upon the rest of us and especially, on our children.”
“Considering the fact that the same school system does not want to allow just one Minute of Silence in the classroom for God, this is preposterous.”
“Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?’ If no action is taken to change this policy, then perhaps it is time for another surgical strike from the majority; ‘A Day of Abstention’ from school participation might be considered.”
We have another apoplectic elected official, this time here in NC, who is threatened by the Day of Silence. She’s after the jump.
Charlotte school board member wants to OK student absences on pro-LGBT Day of Silence.
Charlotte, while it is a large city in NC, has a persistent segment of vocal wingnuttery you won’t find in Durham or Greensboro, for instance. With the April 25 “National Day of Silence” coming up, a day held to protest anti-LGBT violence and harassment in schools, some of the fundies are taking their cue from the American Family Association to keep their kids at home, lest they learn tolerance.
One of those trying to allow students to take an excused absence is Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member Kaye McGarry.
McGarry said she doesn’t approve of any political events in schools: “Whether it’s Christian stuff or Muslim stuff or homosexual stuff, it doesn’t matter.” She said she’ll put a motion for excused absences on the board’s April 15 agenda. McGarry said she’s been getting calls all year from parents who don’t want their children exposed to the event. That accelerated during last month’s high-profile debate over a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools anti-bullying policy.In other news mentioned in the article, it looks like the Wildmon hate machine wants to set up shop in the Tar Heel state. Please, Don, come to Durham — let the ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians here deal with you.Students told the school board that participants in previous silence days have been shoved and called names.
The board approved the anti-bullying policy over the protest of some board and community members who said it could lead to schools promoting homosexuality and squelching the views of some Christians who believe it’s a sin. Afterward, an e-mail from the American Family Association circulated, urging parents to keep their kids home if their school participates.
“By remaining silent, the intent of the pro-homosexual students is to disrupt the classes while promoting the homosexual lifestyle,” says the e-mail, which provides a link listing five Charlotte-Mecklenburg high schools and one in Cabarrus County as participants.
***
Speaking of Charlotte fundies, my personal favorite is Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioner Bill James; I’ve posted on him before. That guy has a serious homo-fixation, and uses his county email addy to send out ridiculous crap like this (and there’s plenty more at the link):
From: Commissioner Bill James
To: =emails deleted=
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 8:56 AM
Subject: Perversity is not diversityYou really think that a pool of people (homosexuals) where 45% of them eat feces from the rear end of another male is “normal”? If you do, you are frankly nuts.
A lifestyle where one of their past times is buying gerbils and hamsters from the pet store and cramming them up their rears in an activity called feltching? A group of people who like to urinate on their partners and call them “golden showers”? Where one of the honored members of the Gay Alliance is an organization called the “Man-Boy Love Association” that promotes sex with underage boys?
That behavior is worthy of protection? That behavior is worthy to be taught in our schools? to our children? You are one sick “Independent, white, married-heterosexual, presbyterian” if you do.
45 Responses to “Florida: Commissioner Brian ‘Killer Bee’ Blair has conniption over Day of Silence”
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Lemme add yet another nutter to the pile: Maine’s own Michael Heath of the Christian Civil League.
Here’s what Mikey has been up to today- working to remove the hard-fought, voter-passed rights of some of his fellow Mainers…
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=180761&ac=PHnws&pg=1
Can we export this guy and his cronies? Please?
That Bill James email cracks me up. And I’m fairly certain felching isn’t small-mammal play (which I do, actually, think is pretty cruel to the small mammals), although I could be wrong.
It’s unfortunate that the kids whose parents will likely pull them out of school for the Day of Silence are the same kids who might not know already that they shouldn’t inflict violence on gay students. What with all the “punishable by death” stuff in Bible.
No one that would wear a pair of bee-striped briefs as their sole item of clothing to work can criticize anything anyone else does. You lose all rights to a vocal opinion upon donning that garment.
These are all the same nuts that flaunt their ability to manipulate school systems by having that “See You at the Pole” bullying session (or at least it was used to bully non-Christians at my school) just as the bell rings so it’s not during school hours, but still requires the kids to be late so attention is brought to their piety. They enforce their double standards with their sex education programs and the whole abstinence-only schtick.
I would’ve expected better from city like Tampa. I’ve always heard, perhaps wrongly, that the area was pretty liberal and progressive. Proof that idiots can get some power anywhere when we’re not looking, I suppose.
Wait, they’re trying to affect our children?
Do you know who participates in Day of Silence in high schools? If you guessed “gay kids and people who know gay kids” you’re right.
So kids fighting for their own acceptance, tolerance of their own identities, must be prevented lest children be affected?
You’ll also be happy to know that the Killer Bees’ finishing move was called the Bee Sting and involved throwing their opponent into the ropes then jumping up and hitting him in his face with their asses. To celebrate a victory they would both jump up and bump their asses together. Don’t ask me why I remember this.
Yep, that whole tolerance, don’t-hurt-people thing is clearly anti-(nutjob) Christian. And I’m sure thousands of teachers are begging their students to join in anything that encourages silence. That has to be the least disruptive thing ever in a classroom.
Assholes.
I grew up in Hillsborough County. I have since moved to the other side of the bay, where people are at least somewhat saner. I don’t know what it is about Hillsborough that attracts Teh Crayzee, but they’ve got it over there in spades.
On behalf of all sane people who have ever lived in Hillsborough County . . . um, sorry about this. And all the other gay-hatin’ bile that comes from there.
I would’ve expected better from city like Tampa. I’ve always heard, perhaps wrongly, that the area was pretty liberal and progressive.
It’s not. St. Petersburg is making strides in that direction, though, which is why I live there instead.
Don’t let the strip clubs fool you - Tampa’s always been a slightly-redneck, slightly-backward little city with an inferiority complex.
If only all the bigots would hold a day of silence … or maybe a week … a month?
You are right, RoRo. Felching is the act of sucking ejaculated semen out of an orifice. Usually the vagina or anus.
So… he definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about in that regard.
the Bee Sting and involved throwing their opponent into the ropes then jumping up and hitting him in his face with their asses. To celebrate a victory they would both jump up and bump their asses together.
That’s a pollen!
My son saw some “wrestling” on TV and said “That’s Gay”. I looked at him sternly and he pointed out “well, it’s two nearly naked guys or guys in lingere rolling about together … like sex”.
Ms. Kate,
Honey, I can’t bee-lieve you said that. Pro wrestling fans are also notoriously homophobic. Methinks they doth protest too much.
I’m surprised Bill James hasn’t accused gays of eating quiche made from Christian children’s blood.
If only all the bigots would hold a day of silence … or maybe a week … a month?
How about the rest of their lives?
Dammit, I’m mad as a hornet, Ms Kate…
Wait, can someone explain this to me in Earth logic? How is sitting silently for a minute disrupting class? and in what way does that promote homosexuality? I just can’t shove my head that far up my own ass to make this kind of assumption work.
I could have gone my whole life without knowing that, Nicest Girl, and not been diminished one bit. Where did I leave my brain bleach?
The last few days I was sitting here wondering why we hadn’t heard about this day locally… then realized we have VACATION ALL NEXT WEEK.
So by default, all of our schools will be silent… definitely not the same.
Crud. Let me try that again:
They have that already. It’s called Prom.
I think the “Day of Silence” is a great idea, and I have nothing against it, but whenever I hear about the “Day of Silence” this scenario always plays out in my head;
Straight Kid: “Hey, LGBT Kid, why aren’t you talking?”
LGBT Kid: *says nothing*
Straight Kid: “Are you trying to bring attention to some political issue?”
LGBT Kid: *says nothing*
Straight Kid: “Are you trying to bring an end to Apartheid?”
LGBT Kid: *says nothing*
Straight Kid: “Is Timmy trapped in a well?”
LGBT Kid: *says nothing*
Straight Kid: “Well, unless you say something, I’m going to go off and commit some hate crimes. Have a nice day!”
A lifestyle where one of their past times is buying gerbils and hamsters from the pet store and cramming them up their rears in an activity called feltching
I am going to have to ask the next 10-year-old I see about this to be sure, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the definition of “feltching.”
You can see his point… I mean look at all the straight people being beaten up and killed by gay people. It must have happened at least once this decade. Clearly an epidemic that must be addressed.
libdevil -
Whatever you do, then, don’t look up or ask for a definition of “munge,” either.
Sadly, I was coming in to see if anyone else had defined “felch” already.
I participated in Day of Silence in high school. We had little cards to show people if they asked why we weren’t speaking, that explained what was going on.
At my school, the organizers specifically told participants that they could participate in legit class discussions — like if they were called on in class, they could answer — and still be participating in Day of Silence. The idea was specifically not to disrupt any classes, but still raise awareness. We had one guy mount a counterprotest by wearing a sandwich board with the citation for one of the anti-gay Bible verses on it, but that was all.
Also, I think there is a strain of wingnut in Greensboro — the News & Record letters to the editor tended to make my head explode. The elected officials were less wingnutty, as I recall, though.
I was definitely having subconscious associations with straws, and decidedly not with paper TP tubes, so that sounds reasonable to me, NG.
You are right, RoRo. Felching is the act of sucking ejaculated semen out of an orifice. Usually the vagina or anus.
So… he definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about in that regard.
Can you imagine, within his entire life, that he would ever come to understand the right definition? I doubt the source he got it from would issue a correction, and I have a feeling that if someone was try to explain it to him, he’d run out of the room with his ears covered yelling “La La La! I can’t hear you!”
How can an adult even go through life believing that anyways? Whenever I hear about an intricate obscene sexual act with and a silly/punny name, my bullshit detector usually goes off, and has gone off ever since I left Cub Scouts.
I’m kind of tempted to send letters to this guy pretending to be anti-homosexual organization that describes homosexuals as performing the “Rusty Trombone” and other silly acts and see if actually buys it. He’d be sitting in his reading room, late at night, reading about the “Dirty Sanchez” muttering to himself “the outrage! the OUTRAGE!” His wife comes into the room, asks him what the matter is and he shouts at her “Something must be done!” Then grabs his coat and heads to the County Commissioner offices to burn the midnight oil, writing up a new legislation banning all homosexuals from entering the county of Hillsborough.
He then brings it up at the next County meeting, only to be met with a smattering of giggles and eye rolls. Brian then gets red in the face and yells to his constituents “You haven’t seen what I have seen!”
I kind of let my imagination run with this post, sorry
He must have been scared of this video. (warning: it contains a professional wrestler ranting about Brian Blair using non-PC language)
He must have been scared of this video. (warning: it contains a professional wrestler ranting about Brian Blair using non-PC language)
People talk about beauty pageants ruining people’s lives, but I don’t think there is any institution that has been responsible for more physical and emotional self-destruction than the world of professional wrestling.
Newsflash for Bill James: the practice of golden showers isn’t limited to homosexuals.
The only sexual act that I have heard of that IS limited to male homosexuals is docking.
The only sexual act limited to straights is PIV intercourse.
Other than that, everybody does what they will with the parts they got and it ain’t matter what parts those is.
Ms Kate,
That reminds me of one of my all time favorite quotes.
“Can it matter where or in whom you put it?”
~Mark Antony.
Quoth Wikipedia: “To Munge (munj) is to create a strong password by character substitution.”
Now, the Urban Dictionary description said something else, but my eyes skittered away after they noticed “embalming fluid”. I’m gonna stick with Wikipedia, kthxbye.
Hey Spencer,
I live near Azalea middle school, where’syouat? O yea, crackers aplenty here in this part of Florida, basically, there are 2 worlds, the snowbirds and tourists that go to their snowbird restaurants, socialize with their snowbird friends and have no interaction with the locals, even long time transplants like my landlord who has been here since ‘68 seem to be able find each other. The OCs (Original Cracker) can be living right next to the transplants but there is no real interaction (not to say they’re not friendly), and even the churches and other social organizations are like that. Separate but equal. It’s the gated community syndrome without the gates. I came to Florida for family reasons, my first week I was like ‘well, this is real slow but at least I can swim”, then i saw one of my neighbors pull out of driveway in an ’80s K-car with a 6x4 treason flag on a stick hanging out the back window, Toto, we’re not in…..
“political events…… Christian stuff, Muslim stuff, or homosexual stuff…”
This sentence is really somewhat surreal if you focus on it a bit. I know the wingnuts have a problem distinguishing between their religious views and their political views, but that’s really quite a ridiculous statement.
As if any child confronted with his list of perversion isn’t going to get curious…
(Raps desk with ruler, looks sternly over top of glasses)
People! We previously discussed and decided this! When that gooey ickiness comes from an anus, the resulting composition is called Santorum.
Please, write this down in your dictionaries under “S” so we do not have to review this again… hmph!
Hey Pale Scot -
I live a few blocks south of Crescent Lake, near downtown. My neighborhood used to be a pretty crack-infested part of town, but it’s cleaned up a *lot* over the last 6 or 7 years.
My experience moving down here - when I was 12, from Detroit - was similar, only my parents dragged me and my brother to Brandon, which in the mid-1980s was nowhere near the bedroom community of Tampa that it is today. Back then it was like a lot of places you’d still find today in Polk or Marion counties. Hated it then; hate it still today.
Fuck Hillsborough County. That place did give the rest of the state Ronda Storms (for the rest of you, you can Google her little stealth attack on Gay Pride Day in Hillsborough from a few years back, if you’re interested), which is in my opinion an unforgivable political sin.
Gosh louise, I hate to nitpick about this of all things, but Santorum is defined strictly as the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the result of anal sex. No mention of semen (it’s a safe sex thing), and certainly no mention of what is then done with said santorum.
RoRo
Crushing is real, but it’s not really homoerotic or heteroerotic — it’s a different thing altogether. And that’s not what he’s talking about, anyway.
Gerbil- or hamster-stuffing is one of those urban legends designed to gross you out about “those people.” I don’t think anyone’s ever found any real stuffing incidents, no matter the stupid jokes and emails and fake x-rays and “doctor reports” circulated about it.
“Considering the fact that the same school system does not want to allow just one Minute of Silence in the classroom for God, this is preposterous.”
The difference is that the school is not making EVERYONE be silent for gay rights. Individual students can have their own Minutes of Silence for God if they want to. They can pray in their heads at any point (although it might be problematic in the middle of a presentation). They can pray out loud in the cafeteria or the hallway in between classes. Public schools have NOT in any way kept individual students from praying. They simply haven’t forced all students to recognize the religious beliefs of some. The comparison is bad and offensive both to gay rights supporters and to non-Christians.
One of the most frequent arguments I’ve been hearing in the past month is that we’ll be causing chaos to the educational process. The intent is not to disrupt class, but to respectfully refrain from vocal participation in protest of bullying. Not slacking, not squeaking our way out of class work. Silence.
Quiet students? Kind of a rare species in public schools.
(Sure, it might cause a few teachers to pop an aneurysm in sheer surprise, but it’s not like they’ve been striving to set a precedent for immense effort in the field of adolescent instruction, anyway.)
In all seriousness, as a result of the disgusting propaganda spread by fundamentalists like Commissioners Blair and James, just the appearance of the words “Day of Silence” on my high school’s activities calendar has caused a backlash from protesting parents who think their delicate children will be lured to the dark side by a few lesbians and gays remaining quiet throughout the day.
(Disregarding the fact that, most of the time, it’s their similarly close-minded children instigating the bullying and harassment that gave rise to the event.)
Because of the parents’ intolerance, the GSA club I belong to has been forced to de-homosexualize a day all about gays, making it more “inclusive” for the masses. In fact, if the bitching continues, we may not even be officially allowed to attend the event.
Thanks, fundies!
One of the most frequent arguments I’ve been hearing in the past month is that we’ll be causing chaos to the educational process. The intent is not to disrupt class, but to respectfully refrain from vocal participation in protest of bullying. Not slacking, not squeaking our way out of class work. Silence.
Quiet students? Kind of a rare species in public schools.
(Sure, it might cause a few teachers to pop an aneurysm in sheer surprise, but it’s not like they’ve been striving to set a precedent for immense effort in the field of adolescent instruction, anyway.)
In all seriousness, as a result of the disgusting propaganda spread by fundamentalists like Commissioners Blair and James, just the appearance of the words “Day of Silence” on my high school’s activities calendar has caused a backlash from protesting parents who think their delicate children will be lured to the dark side by a few lesbians and gays remaining quiet throughout the day.
(Disregarding the fact that, most of the time, it’s their similarly close-minded children instigating the bullying and harassment that gave rise to the event.)
Because of the parents’ intolerance, the GSA club I belong to has been forced to de-homosexualize a day all about gays, making it more “inclusive” for the masses. In fact, if the bitching continues, we may not even be officially allowed to attend the event.
Thanks, fundies!
I stand corrected, Grolby- gonna blame an early senior moment with no enough caffeine in the system.
Yeah, let’s go with that!! (ie, OOPS…)
Oy, that posted twice. Dontcha just love IE’s insanity?
I apologize if something along this lines has already been said… I didn’t read the thread, because I was too pissed off by this line:
Since when are religious and sexual preferences “political”? They sound pretty personal to me.
That’s the problem with these right-wing assholes… they’re trying to force their agendas on US by saying we’re forcing OUR agendas on THEM. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how standing up for yourself or your friends/family constitutes forcing agendas on anyone.
*bangs head on stuff*