Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

I read "Dobby Award" and laughed. "Dobby not leave Harry Potter's side! Dobby will HELP Harry Potter defeat scary God-yelling man, even though Dobby is supposed to work for scary God-yelling man!"

LOL.
 

Hardly surprising.

And these FotF types are different from Fred Phelps how, exactly?

Looks the same to me:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akiste/65687833/in/set-1417166/
 

Not surprising. Most small towns are packed full of intolerant homophobes. Also not sure what the difference is between being asked to resign and being fired other than the fact that complying with the first guarantees you can't collect unemployment insurance payments.
 

Local report says she was not asked to resign.
 

Oh, Alan, on how FOTF is different from Phelps:

Well, rightly or wrongly, FOTF tries to "help" gays go "ungay" -- and as soon as I typed that, I realized that that might very well beworse than a bunch of obvious hate-filled maroons running arond casting gays into the pits of a fiery hell, since virtually no one takes Phelps seriously, but millions do take Dobby and his sheeple seriously, so never mind.

"Dobby" -- that has a ring to it, no? And Teresa gets R points for this belly laugh of the week: ""Dobby not leave Harry Potter's side! Dobby will HELP Harry Potter defeat scary God-yelling man, even though Dobby is supposed to work for scary God-yelling man!" :-)
 

Local pressure and local threats often don't get reported.
_____

In 2007, a high school in Wilton, Ct (very wealthy, NY bedroom community) stopped production on a student-created play using interviews with Iraqis and American soldiers called Voices in Conflict.

Predictably, it voiced experiential criticism of war and this war in particular.

Big money -- much of it from fund-raising has been spent over ten years in Wilton to create a top of the line theatre department. But the mandate to be highly creative still must serve local values.

"Be fantastically creative! But not with that... we'll tell you what you can be creative about."
_____

The anxieties of patriotism are everywhere and will always be. And maybe that is not necessarily a bad thing.

But the geography of outright gay hate is being eroded, slowly. And now more so from the top. But the backlash heavily confuses things.

Like missing entirely the murderous abridgment of civil rights.

"Twelve Angry Men" (brilliant though it is) gets to be rehashed even longer.
 

"Helping gays go ungay since 1977"

Heh. That should be their tag line

Hmmm.... Helping gays go ungay ... where did I read about that recently? Oh right, on my blog, regarding a story out of South Africa regarding the "corrective rape" of lesbians to get them to go "ungay."

As for the difference between Phelps and Dobson, I've got a friend who says there are two types of straight people: those who hate you to your face, and those who hate you behind your back. While I disagree that there are only two types, I do prefer the out and proud haters to the closeted ones.
 

Ah, yes. Been waiting till I settled down to comment. Everybody in Grandfield knows who is gay and who is not. It is sort of the small town's version of "don't ask don't tell" with an added "do your thing in Wichita Falls or Lawton, but not here". Grandfield tolerates its gays just fine thank you, so long as they know their place.

Grandfield is a dying town anyway, this will just speed up the process. It is not the bigotry that is at the heart of this, it is the hypocrisy of it all.

Grandfield was dead last of the schools in Tillman county to integrate and then only because their good black football players were playing for Frederick after it integrated under court order and beating the home team badly every time.

In 1954 after "Brown" was settled the city fathers moved all of the "negro citizens" out of the outlying and alleyway homes to North of the railroad tracks and then deannexed that part of town from the school district. So all of the black kids had to ride a bus 40 miles each school day to go to the negro school in Frederick, Oklahoma.

And yes there was the local preacher who got the ball rolling on this gay thing:
"Dwight Parker, minister of the town's Church of Christ, said he and several other preachers went to Turlington with concerns after checking the script online and finding graphic sexual content and multiple uses of sexually oriented curse words. Rather than a gay rights issue, it's one of upsetting moral standards and Taylor ignoring Turlington's authority, Parker said. "This play was very offensive and used every imaginable curse word," Parker said, adding that the preachers weren't trying to create an environment of hatred."
---Tulsa Talk Radio transcript


The fact that this caused Grandfield to be written about in USA Today will be the only thing that the city fathers will regret about it.

Use to be in these small towns the A and B students gave up on them and moved away upon graduation, thus leaving the C students to be elected to the school boards and city councils etc. when they grew up. Now days, the A, B, C, and D students are leaving town thus giving the F students and high school drop-outs their chance to run these places.

Now before you go off half cocked about my attitude on small towns and this one in particular, let me say, this town is my own.
 

Oh Yes, did Phelps show up?

"WBC to picket 'The Laramie Project,
- Grandfield High School Grandfield,
Oklahoma,
Fri., Mar. 10, from 1:30 to 3:15 p.m.
In religious education, protest and warning; to wit: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked." Gal.6:7. God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers. Ergo, God hates The Laramie Project, and all those having to do with spreading sodomite lies via this tacky piece of misleading, homosexual propaganda masquerading as legitimate theater. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith." Lev. 18:22,23. Police investigators said Shepard's sexual orientation had nothing to do with his murder. The play is fiction. Matt Shepard has been in Hell now for ten years, with eternity left to go on his sentence - without appeal, parole, or time off for ,ood behavior. All else about Matt is triVial and irrelevant. Deal with it, you gullible kids. You'll join Matt in Hell soon."
 

DrLobo, both halves of my cock are secured. I was never question on you on this because it IS your nec of thewoods. Having stomped around there myself quite a bit, I can concur. ... As for small towns, the last time I was part of one was 1984 -- and I know my romanticized recollections are just that.
 

In the late 50's and early 60's such a place was a great place to raise kids. Reading what some of the kids are saying now looks like Grandfield is still doing a good job of raising human beings. But down in the county as elsewhere in small town America the phrase, " To get along, you must go along." is still operational. So for those not willing to "go along", those kids have to "get out".
That is the sad part.
 

By the way, The Laramie Project is such a cool play. (And I certainly don't think that everything "gay" is automatically "cool"!) If you ever get the chance to see it, do. Interestingly, I saw it performed in Oklahoma. It was a student production at UCO in Edmond. There was also a made for TV film, which was good too. I think it was an HBO production.

The cruel irony, of course, is that the play warns of the high costs of small town bigotry. *sigh*
 

*Sigh* is right.