Hallow-een is two weeks away, but the Religious Right was out to scare the country Sunday with an event that examined threats posed by gays to religious institutions.
The Family Research Council (FRC) hosted its "Liberty Sunday: Defending Our First Freedom" for about 1,000 people at Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston.
Meanwhile, churches across the country held simulcasts and FRC aired a Web cast of the event.
Fortunately, none of the churches or radio stations in the Centre County area participated in the event that only served to propagate hate.
But Penn State has seen enough of these demonstrations this semester with visits from both the Woroniecki and Venyah families, which brought virtually the same messages as FRC. Their rhetoric fired up students on both sides of the issues, but also furthered ignorance.
FRC speakers included Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney; Focus on the Family President James Dobson, American Family Association Chairman Rev. Donald Wildmon, and FRC President Tony Perkins, all reciting the same rhetoric: Gays are threatening religious freedom in this country.
During the hour and a half FRC allocated to address these "threats," only one speaker made direct mention of an actual danger he thought he faced.
"The day will come if you say one bad thing about homosexuality ... that they will come into your church and they will shut you up and you will be arrested for a hate crime," Wildmon said on a short video played during the event.
Wildmon's sentiment displays his ignorance of the motives of gay rights activists. I am fairly certain I am better versed on the gay rights agenda than Wildmon because I am gay and have met far more gays than he could imagine.
And from my experience, America's gays are far more concerned with securing basic fundamental rights for themselves and those who will come after them than they are with bringing down the church.
With everything else considered, the gay rights movement actually has a lot in common with other movements this country has seen over the past few decades, including the fight by blacks for equal rights.
Throughout the evening, several speakers addressed the similarities, or lack thereof, between the gay rights and civil rights movements. Recently, many progressives have drawn legitimate parallels between the two, but FRC disagreed.
Rather than acknowledge that gays are fighting a fight similar to that which blacks fought 40 years ago, Bishop Wellington Boone chose to reduce gay lifestyle to a choice: "A person can change [his or her] mind about [his or her] sexuality..." he said. "But I can't change my mind about my race."
If Boone had any sense, he would realize that only a fool would choose to be gay in a society that looks upon gays just as it looks upon animals. But then again, if Boone had any sense, he would not speak on behalf of this ignorant agenda.
After Boone made a fool of himself, another short video explained the fallout of a decision made by teachers at Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Mass., to let their second-grade students read a book called "King and King," in which the main character, a prince, marries another prince.
Robin Wirthlin, who opposes gay rights, said in the video that she was violated by the school that allowed her son to read the book.
"I felt that the school was trying to chip away at my child's moral foundation and violate my parental guidance because they think they know better," she said.
The school was trying to present the students the truth of the world around them. The truth is some people are gay, and in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, it is legal for gays to marry.
For the school to present students with literature and other resources depicting a strictly heterosexual world would be a blatant effort to deceive them.
Such deception seems to be at the core of FRC's agenda. While FRC was correct in identifying that our first freedom is under attack, it misidentified the group on the offensive.
If FRC were legitimately concerned about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, it would go after the group that seeks to oppress all non-Christians and spews hatred toward innocent gays: the Religious Right.
