Why is GLSEN Bullying My Community?

Aaron Sweeney is a youth minister in Illinois.
June 21, 2012

I can’t remember the last time my town’s been in the national news—in fact, maybe there hasn’t really been another time. I guess that’s why what’s going on now has taken so many of us by surprise.

I’m the youth minister at a church in Erie, Illinois—a town of about 1,500 people that represents a mixture of local business owners, farmers, teachers and factory workers and others.

We’ve never experienced anything like this—where for the last several weeks our town has been the target of a national pressure campaign launched by gay activists and liberal media. People in our town have been called insulting names by angry bloggers. They’ve gotten phone calls to their home and hate emails from people who don’t even live here.

So what was our town’s big crime—the one that suddenly put us on the map for hate speech and CNN coverage?

Well—we just dared to say no. the rest

So I’ve been asking myself why a well-funded, big-time outfit like GLSEN would find it worthwhile to use pressure-tactics against a 200-student elementary school in a rural area. And the best answer I’ve come up with so far is that they don’t like the precedent of anyone—even parents in smalltown America—saying no to them. I guess they really do think they know better than the majority of people raising their kids and elected community leaders.