Fighting Hate with More Hate?

As you may already know, the Westboro Baptist Church has finally made its way to Coeur d' Alene, staging pickets at North Idaho College, Lake City High School, and Coeur d' Alene High School. As a result, counter-protests have been staged by the local community and many who are passionately against the church have turned out to express their disapproval.

Now instead of going on a rant about how Fred Phelps and his family are poor excuses for human beings, I wanted to talk more about how people respond to this man and his "church". Personally, watching his pickets online and seeing the counter protests just frustrates me. Why do protesters believe that yelling things at this man and his followers will make any difference or change the way Westboro Baptists feel? Staging counter protests and getting engaged in shouting matches simply provides the media attention that they love so much. Do you think the The Westboro Baptists Church believes that they will change people's minds by protesting? No, they're goal is simply to make people angry and attract attention to themselves.

Instead of holding an angry counter-protest where the church plans to picket, why not hold a large gathering or event across town and positively protest? This would draw both crowds and media attention away from Phelps and would ultimately decrease the satisfaction he gets from making people angry. While Phelps is promoting "God Hates Fags" on the other side of town, why not hold a gay-acceptance event at a different location? If they're holding up their infamous "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" signs, people could hold a rally to thank our troops for their service.

The main point I'm getting at here is that we need to take the insane amounts of negativity promoted by the Westboro Baptist Church and turn it into something positive. We need to take Phelps' hate and turn it into good feelings. Think about this, for example: The Westboro Baptist Church consists of less than a hundred members, compared to millions upon millions of people who disagree with their views. The sad fact is that the loudest one percent of people get ninety-five percent of the media coverage. Instead of being angered about the views of the church, think about all the perfectly reasonable people that exist in this country. Personally, the fact that this man doesn't have more followers gives me hope for humanity. I strongly believe that people are generally good, and I think we ought to remember that.

The Advancement of Technology

This morning I watched Apple's Back to the Mac keynote live (because I'm a nerd like that), and was very impressed with some of the new bold moves Apple is making with their OS, as well as some great improvements to their iLife suite. My fellow nerds can see everything talked about here.


I won't get into specifics, but Apple added a lot of really cool professional-looking effects to their iMovie program, and a friend of mine commented, "I wish they didn't make those available to everybody. I leaned how to make those in high school and we had to work really hard at it."

My immediate response was that this comment was selfish, but I can completely understand the frustration. Technology moves at an alarming rate, and all that cool stuff you bought over the years (last week?) is already obsolete. This is just a fact of life, and you can be in a constant state of sorrow about your 3rd Gen. iPod Touch you purchased a month ago, or you can appreciate what you have and get the most out of it.

Think about the video-editing process for example. The most basic free software can make some of the most professional-looking video incredibly easily. Those fancy effects that used to take hours to manually produce can now be done with a simple drag-and-drop. This can be frustrating for the seasoned video-editor who remembers all they went through when they were learning. But there's always somebody who had it worse than you did.

Before the age of computers, editors had to cut and splice things by literally cutting the film strip and taping it back together again, a process that could take days and days for a simple video. Talk to anybody who had to go through that, and they'll be amazed at what software can do these days. The difference between them is their attitude towards it. They can either be mad and complain that people don't appreciate video editing anymore, or they can be happy that this technology has inspired a whole new generation of amateur movie-makers.

This just furthers my philosophy that life is all about the attitude you have toward your everyday situations. You can be sad and envious about not having the latest technology, or you can appreciate what you have and be happy for the new generation that gets to use it.

Acceptance in the Boy Scouts

I heard something today that bothered me a great deal, and inspired me to start this blog. I read a story about a man who was essentially kicked out of a leadership position in the Boy Scouts because other members complained about his sexual orientation. The man, who is a devoted father of a scout, was forced to step down as a leader and not wear the uniform because some of the other parents found out he is gay.

The intolerance of a few never really surprises me, but it angered me a great deal when I found out that the official policy of the Boy Scouts is that homosexuals and atheists are not aloud to partake in the organization in any way, according to both a scout executive and the director of public relations for the scouts.

This simply blew me away. The fact that a reputable organization that's supposed to help our boys become men and prepare them for adulthood discriminates against homosexuals is utterly ridiculous. I would like somebody to explain to me what makes a gay person, or a gay father for that matter, any less capable of teaching our young boys values and lessons to help guide them through life.

When I brought this up to a friend of mine at the university, she said to me "Would you want a gay man to take your son and a group of boys into the forest for a weekend and teach the boys how to be men?"
Just as much as I would want any other straight man to take my son into the woods. Because the man is gay, does that mean he will automatically be attracted to my (hypothetical) son and his group of friends? Does that mean he will feel the need to instill his "gay agenda" upon them? Absolutely not. There is no "gay agenda", in fact there are very few phrases that bother me as much as that one. Just as a straight leader of the Boy Scouts is not there to teach them to have sex with women, a gay Scout Leader is not there to convince the boys to have sex with men.

This brings me to the fact that Atheists are not aloud in the Scouts either. In an organization endorsed by the US Government and whose leader is the President, the same policies should be in be in place that are in place in this country. All religions, including Atheism, should be accepted. Just as the United States is not by law a Christian nation, the Boy Scouts should not be either. What makes people think that Atheists have any less of an ability to teach morals and values than a Christian, whose Pope actively defends Priests who have molested young boys? I won't get in to the argument of religion here, since I respect all religions that are tolerant of others with differing views.

The bottom line here is that any organization of our government, especially one as prestigious and reputable as the Boy Scouts of America, should be tolerant of all people, regardless of religion, race, AND sexual orientation. I would expect better from the Boy Scouts especially in a country that now (finally!) accepts the openly gay in its military.


Here's the link to the original article.
 **EDIT 10/20/2010** - The Boy Scouts are not "run" by the US Government, but "endorsed"