In the spirit of the 21st century culture of inclusiveness, and trying to make everyone feel more comfortable, the powers-that-be at TFHS chose to adjust the teams slightly. It turns out that "Blue v Pink", despite seeming to be a safer arrangement, actually set the stage for a disastrous turn of events when the bigots and zealots both came out to play. Here's the article:
The TL:DR version? When a group of students who felt marginalized by the "blue v pink" (presumably because they didn't feel either blue or pink) chose to come to school wearing purple, the battle lines were drawn. To be fair, there was a "wear purple" campaign done in advance, so this didn't come out of the blue, for students OR staff.
My immediate reaction was one of shock, with a side helping of the haughtiness groomed from thirty-three years of teaching this age group. The adults should have dealt with this situation better.
Then I read the comments following the article.
Holy frijole.
"Sounds like a simple case of having a bunch of hypersensitive snowflakes in close proximity to a bunch of insecure a-holes. If you go looking for a reason to be offended, you're probably going to find one. At the same time, shame on those students who said vulgar and despicable things. Thicker skins and decent manners could save these kids a lot of unnecessary drama. I'm not saying they need to have a big group hug everyday, but good grief, just live and let live (on both sides)."
DanE
"Oh please, there are multiple generations of American snowflakes who couldn't handle black people using the same bathroom as them. Rural folks in Idaho stutter when I tell them I'm an anarcho-communist. White cis/het insecurity is a vital part of conservative American identity."
Jarrik Varizen
"Yawn. Get the gender dysphorics help, instead of forcing the world to accept insanity."
Ramsey
"Or, you could just go ahead and worry about things that actually affect you. There's a thought."
"I promise that most of these kids you claim to be insane are smarter and have far more potential than your sad, pitiful life has likely amounted to. Must be rough to hate yourself as much as you do. Of course, ignorance to the degree you exemplify must be somewhat comforting. Quite the conundrum. A conundrum you'll never fully understand. Ironic, isn't it?"
And it goes on and on like this, getting progressively meaner and cruder in undoubtedly the same way that the arguments at Twin Falls HS did that day. It would be hard for us to hold the teenagers to a higher standard than the adults in the community who are at equally immobile loggerheads on this topic.
So, let's look at some basics about the whole situation (and please, read the article before you continue here) -
The "Spirit Day" tradition of boys v girls had not been a problem, but there was a hope on the part of somebody that switching to non-gender specific sides would allow the students more freedom to choose how to participate. If you want to be right-wing Christian about this, then that fact alone was the catalyst, because the argument that gender is not something that should be "chosen" immediately comes into play. It's hard to know from the outside whether the change was made because of some sort of top-down mandate, or if it really was something student-driven. The article says, "But in response to student concerns, student leaders changed it to “blue versus pink” this year in an effort to be more inclusive." When I read the article, and see the emphasis on certain parents' comments in the writing (the woman in charge of the "Mama Dragons" in particular), I suspect that those "student concerns" were more "parental concerns" than anything else. If true (and I have no other evidence that it is), the whole thing was a set-up to begin with to allow the students wearing purple to have a day to make a statement. Right or wrong, that becomes the issue, not the ramifications of the set-up, at least for starters.
But let's assume that the change was innocuous, for argument's sake. What happened first?
The lead-up to the day was already tense, and the only reason given in the article for this was the "wear purple" campaign itself. One student is quoted as saying that even though he hadn't announced his intent to participate, he was getting harassed ahead of time. An objective reader's presumption would be that the student is either openly LGBTQ or publicly assumed to be at least in strong support, if the common assumption was that he would be in the "protest" group. Does that make harassment right? Never, of course. But it's the problem with sticking your neck out, either as an individual or as a group: crossfire will come your way.
The backlash began almost immediately, it seems. Those students who objected to either the LGBTQ students' agenda or existence (depending on severity) fired back at what they saw as an assault against what they believed. Were they right to harass anyone because of their beliefs? Of course not. But to say it was unexpected by anyone even tangentially familiar with the gay-rights battles of the last forty years would be naive at best, a falsehood at worst. You knew it was coming.
At this point, before Spirit Day has even arrived, as a school administrator I would have cancelled the event.
If you see what seems to have been apparent to these people in advance - the torn down posters, the tension in the student body, the campaign in advance to buck the system on Spirit Day - you have the obligation to protect both sides of this conflict as the adult in the situation. There are teachers and administrators on the ground in that facility - I've taught in similar sized schools my entire career; I've walked the halls of TFHS during school hours; I know whereof I speak. If that was what was going on, there were adults who knew this would be a disaster.
Be that as it may...too late now to change it.
The issue is one of tolerance versus acceptance. Those are two different things.
To tolerate is to allow something to continue because it isn't infringing on your rights; you do NOT have to agree with their position; you do not have to accept their position; you do not even have to speak neutrally about their position. You DO, however, have to "live and let live". You cannot infringe on THEIR rights, any more than they can infringe on YOURS.
To accept is to come to an agreement that their position is an appropriate position, lifestyle, belief, etc., to have. You do not have to adopt that position yourself, but you are allowing them to do so "with your blessing", in a manner of speaking. They STILL cannot infringe on your right to hold a different position: they must also be accepting of YOUR position, presumably.
(There is a third rung on this ladder, which would be to regulate their position into everyone's life. That's saying that they no longer will accept OR tolerate YOUR position or lifestyle with regard to the subject at hand. That isn't the situation here.)
In essence, the "purple" group is insisting that everyone else on campus should accept their lifestyle, because requiring the use of purple to accommodate their circumstance implies that the rules needed to change for them. It did NOT mean that the third rung was being used - nobody else had to join them - but they were demanding acceptance, not merely tolerance.
In contrast, the backlashing people (and I'm reading people's thoughts here - I don't know this for sure - but the logic holds up with the evidence) were retreating from their previously held position. Follow me here: If they knew that kids on campus were indeed LGBTQ, as the one child implied, but never 'sought them out' to punish them or pick on them (and we don't know they didn't, but you'd think that would have come up in the article were it true), then they had already chosen to tolerate the position/lifestyle of the LGBTQ folks.
But when those folks wanted to push the envelope towards acceptance, they started to back away from even tolerance, going to the extremes of vandalism and social media assaults against those they'd long known were homosexual or trans, but had left alone until now.
And so the war begins anew. An uneasy truce is disrupted when one side pushes for more ground than the other side was willing to surrender. None of this is meant to address the "right" or "wrong" of the sides; as a Christian, my argument should be obvious to anyone who's truly accepted the Lord into his/her heart. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. We tolerate all sinners, because we are sinners ourselves. We accept all sinners, but we do not accept their sins. They, like us, have issues which they must work out with God in their own time and way. It is not our place to punish them for sin - it's God's.
We are NOT a Christian nation - we cannot demand all laws align with God's commands. But we have enough Godly men and women in this nation, including in positions of authority, that we can make a strong campaign for such laws, and if the majority of our nation believes those laws are worth enforcing, so be it. As we are granted grace by our Lord, we must also grant grace to the sinners among us, for that number includes ourselves in all situations. No sin is unrepentable.
And we have a responsibility to demand that no laws CONTRARY to God's commands be enacted. We will unquestionably be forced to choose between God's Law, the laws of our permanent home in Heaven, and that of the nation we temporarily reside in while on sojourn here on earth. The choice should not be difficult to make, but it will be stressful on our human bodies as the punishment is enforced by the ungodly who reside here with us until they are cast down below. Rather than be forced into that situation, we must do whatever we can to avoid seeing such laws passed.
We want to tolerate all people in all actions that do not infringe upon our rights and obligations as Christians. (Leave punishment of sins to God. Leave punishment of earthly breeches to earthly police and judiciaries.) We want to accept all people, but NOT all actions, because we are told to guide all the world's people towards Christ, the only Way to the Father and to eternity in Heaven and not Hell. We never harass, we never pronounce judgment on others - that is for God to do. We gently guide with love in our hearts and words.
In Twin Falls, the situation will resolve itself. Tempers will die down. Protagonists will move on to other situations, often other situations to violate God's commandments on tolerance and acceptance. And we will watch all this, and wonder when God will bring His people Home, where sin does not exist.
