Video response to the Illinois Family Institute Dare to Stand video

On the Illinois Family Institute website, a revised video opposing the Day of Silence is posted. Also posted on a new website, called Dare to Stand, it is hosted on YouTube and embedded below. The IFI folks have disabled ratings, comments and vocal responses for the video so I thought I would post my video response (Hero by Superchick) to the Dare to Stand video here.

And now the IFI video.

Instead of “Dare to Walkout,” how about Dare to be a Hero?
I will have another video response tomorrow as well more information on the Golden Rule Pledge and anti-bullying in general.

22 thoughts on “Video response to the Illinois Family Institute Dare to Stand video”

  1. Jayhuck: What do family values mean to you? Does that include gay families?

    I meant stories and models that make men and women excited or interested in getting married and having children. Well, women are more interested in them…
    Gay marriages haven’t been around for long. It’ll take time until they pass the endurance test, if they do. But many families already have gay members, I don’t see why do you talk about families in terms of sexual orientation.

  2. It is important to note that there is a genetic component to prejudice

    David B –
    I couldn’t agree with you anymore !!!

  3. oops…our (not are) frontal lobes…
    David Blakeslee,
    I knew what you meant and always look forward to reading what you write 🙂

  4. @ Evan,
    Prejudice, sectarianism…the fear of the other: evolutionary perhaps in origin to demand that a small group being even more cohesive and organized (us) and to protect one’s community from “the other.”
    For a period of time, it may have been adaptive in important ways. In our “smaller world” it complicates tremendously collaboration, safety and coordination.
    It is important to note that there is a genetic component to prejudice…and yet we seek to educate people, train people, to not act on their prejudice.

  5. @ Ann,
    I appreciate anyone who practices what I call Christian values, whether they profess themselves as Christians or not.
    Exercising discipline over emotions and feelings…that is what are frontal lobes are for!

  6. Evan,
    What do family values mean to you? Does that include gay families?
    Warren,
    How are schools indoctrinating people?

  7. Debbie,
    I enjoyed your daughter’s article. The one thing I would like to start seeing more of, however, (and this most definitely is not something unique to your daughter’s article) is the recognition that there are Christians who have different views on homosexuality. Far far too often people are split into either the Gay OR Christian camp, when often, people are both. 🙂
    I did appreciate her compassion and her willingness to champion Warren’s alternative though.

  8. Evan – well said.
    I am wary of schools who want to indoctrinate so do not misunderstand that I am oblivious to schools pursuing that approach. However, the IFI video creates a fiction much in the same way that Pink Floyd’s video, “The Wall” does. Teacher leave those kids alone! The song blares. But that is a leftist impulse against the bourgeois routine. This right wing video proposes that teachers are stifling the Bible.
    Just as Pink Floyd overreacts, so does this video. Where schools inhibit free inquiry they should be confronted. However, what I fear the D2S people want is freedom for their ideas and a ban on others.

  9. 1st video: shifting the focus from what should be done with ‘people who don’t fit’ to what can you do for them and thus be a hero, a valued person.
    2nd video: simplistic manipulation that could be done better. I do agree that family values must be promoted, but not against someone.

  10. Zoe Brain,
    I agree. I will just quote what I wrote in a reply last year:

    I don’t think this is just an equation of faith versus sexual identity, although I do not deny that most people might put it that way when they get vocal or public about it. When people get confrontational about what they hate in society, they can make use of their most sacred values in order to force their opponents either to come up with equally good reasons for their behaviour or to deny those beliefs and make themselves look bad. I also think people’s anger can be sparked by the fears they have and exposure to what they do not want to see in the public space. Most people are not dogmatic, they have common emotions like you and me. That’s why I believe it has more to do with their own emotions about other people’s declared sexual identity than with church dogma. Time will tell, I stand by my argument that people manipulate their beliefs against people they cannot abide. That’s why there are religious people who, although they recognise that church dogma prohibits same-sex behaviour, they have no problem with gay people as individuals. These are people who are secure enough to deal with people of different assumed sexual identity, their faith does not dictate them to harbour hate.

    Here’s another argument:

    We may be focusing on a particular instance that is perceived to be motivated by religion, because people who speak up and who preach against what they think is immoral are mostly religious. The rest of the homophobic people, from the general society, may hardly be religious and may have no motivation to voice their hatred, but still they may be the ones committing acts of assault on people of different sexual orientation. Why don’t anonymous haters band together or speak up? Because there is no moral banner under which they can come together: every such grouping has a ‘highbrow’ claim, a symbolic purpose. But it’s not that that makes them hate […].

    I still think that religious belief does not make someone hateful, but that the motivation is deeper, at the level of primary feelings. There is scientific data that proves aggressive homophobia in adults is caused by projected self-hate. Calm disagreement based on beliefs is something altogether different.

  11. Warren, and everyone:
    I thought you might like to see the column my daughter wrote for today’s Sentinel (Carlisle, PA) on the Day of Silence and other movements: http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2009/04/17/news/religion/doc49e773d77adcc552356358.txt
    You and the Golden Rule Pledge are mentioned, Warren,
    She received a nice note already from a Carlisle Schools official. I offer my daughter as redeeming evidence for my life. LOL. She is smarter than her mother.

  12. It is natural to hate and to be hateful. Christianity forbids acting on that hatred.
    David Blakeslee,
    I don’t think one has to identify as a Christian to exercise discipline regarding acting on our feelings/emotions. I actually think it is a privilege afforded all of mankind – it is the gift of free will.

  13. David,
    Sarcasm, put downs, scoffing at the ideas of others, insisting that someone else does not know what they are talking about, belittling. These are all hateful acts and I have seen them used frequently by some on this blog and other blogs to stop free and open discussion. I also see it used in film, comedy, TV talk shows, and by politicians and generally by people in positions of power who want very much to maintain that power. The interesting thing I cannot help but notice is that it is often directed at Christians who are being made to look like they know nothing. I have seen it used in academic settings to support the need for anti-hate laws and anti-bullying policies. Isn’t it interesting that the people who are most vocal about establishing such policies so often have no problem in using these tactics to attempt to remove any opposition to their own ideas.

  14. To further elaborate…
    It is natural to hate and to be hateful. Christianity forbids acting on that hatred.

  15. I watched both videos, thanks Warren.
    I think both things need to be said, frankly.
    The 60’s and the 70’s emphasized a nearly 30 year old rubric of the natural man as innately good, corrupted by Culture (and, therefore, Christianity).
    The return to the natural man, as the ideal, came to mean embracing what every came naturally and viewing moral guidance as a kind of Corruption of the Natural State of man.
    The work of Jung and later, Kinsey and Margaret Meade laid the foundation for popular culture to make this shift.
    It is reasonable to rethink if this philosophy is beneficial…and to examine when it is specifically applied to one set of behaviors and then indoctrinated in a curriculum…
    That is not hate.
    Ridicule is hate.

  16. Zoe,
    Some people ARE mean. It has nothing to do with religion, gender, or sexuality. There is good and bad in every bunch. Some christians I know are mean, some are not.

  17. At some point in time, you must realise that they don’t hate because of their religion. They use their religion to excuse their hatred.
    I’ve been accused, and justly, for wearing rose-coloured glasses. For only seeing the good in people who are doing terrible things. But even I have to draw the line somewhere. At some point, you can no longer say that people are misled, that they don’t know the true situation. At some point, you have to realise that their malice causes them to deceive, they’re not being deceived into being malicious.
    Please tell me I’m wrong. Convince me, because I don’t like believing this.

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