AN “ultra-conservative” band of school trustees at Wheatland High School and West Elementary in Wyoming recently voted 4 -3 NOT to reinstate anti-hate banners that formed part of a campaign organised by the Anti-Defamation League.
Now an on-line poll has been launched calling on the board to reverse its moronic ruling.
The schools were two of 25 in Colorado and Wyoming participating in the programme – but, according to this report, the banners were quickly removed when it was discovered that one of the project’s sponsors was the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado.
Murdered gay student Matthew Shepard
You would think that, in a state made infamous for the brutal, homophobic killing of 21-year-old university student Matthew Shepard, the trustees would have pulled out all the stops to support any campaign aimed at curbing hate crime in general.
Oh no!
Said Stuart Nelson, the district’s superintendent:
The board thought it was inappropriate to have that sponsorship hanging up in the school.
Board member Lee Dunham added that Wheatland was an “ultra-conservative community” – by which he no doubt means it’s dominated by fundamentalist Christian hayseeds – and that the district wasn’t ready to include that group [Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado].
The state, by the way, is home to the loopy WyWatch Family Action group – a band of “Judeo-Christian families who have a goal to preserve traditional family values in the great state of Wyoming”.
And according to this report, the Mormons in Wyoming:
Are taking a higher profile … in promoting bills linked to controversial social issues including assisted suicide, gay marriage and abortion.
Joe Fabian, another school board member, said he believes the Anti-Defamation League was pushing an “agenda that is pro-gay marriage” and that the community of Wheatland is not supportive of that.
They wouldn’t want the organization, the Anti-Defamation League, dictating to their children that an alternate lifestyle is a normal lifestyle … I don’t believe (homosexuality) is a normal lifestyle, but I don’t have anything against them.
The district apparently liked certain aspects of the programme, which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, is designed to teach young people about tolerance and respecting differences.
Nelson said:
We’re still allowing the programme to continue.
“Whoa! Hold your horses” said the Anti-Defamation League, and declared that neither school will be allowed to continue participating in the “No Place for Hate” programme so long as they deny hanging space for the banners
Said Bruce DeBoskey, Mountain States regional director for the group in Denver:
The league will no longer allow the programme if it’s not being honored and used in its fullest intent.
He called the Wheatland board’s decision tragic and “painfully ironic.”
The league is extremely concerned that this whole programme – which is designed to teach young people to respect the differences among us – has been derailed by people who appear to have biases.
He urged people in Wheatland to speak out.
But not only in Wheatland. The petition calls on people around the globe to send a message to the schools that they should allow the banners back, “and continue to work toward respect and tolerance for ALL students, and all human beings.”
The petition has a way to go to get the 10,000 signatures it’s aiming for. Please give it a boost.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 24th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
I wonder what will happen if someone wants to exclude ‘people of colour’ because racism has always been a thing in the family. Caving in to phobes of any stripe might mean they’ll end up with a campaign not hating WASPs or something.
February 24th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Makes you wonder why the Yanks are tooling around in Afghanistan when the Taliban seem to be running Wyoming.
February 24th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
What is the matter with these people. It seems that they can’t be happy unless they have got someone to hate. Therefore the campaign against hating people has to have a caveat just for them so that they can carry on hating the gays, just the gays mind, we are right behind you otherwise.
February 24th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
So the Mormons are jumping on the hate bandwagon also. Hypocrites. How do they justify polygamy with family values when some of them like in Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada had many wives and one , a so-called bishop of the Mormon Church , even had 26 wives and more than 100 children. Ah, but that’s no problem. Look what happened when they decided to accept blacks in their church? Amazing that blacks were regarded as cursed for 150 years because they were of the lineage of Cain or some idiocy like that and thus they could not attain priesthood in the Mormon Church and so could not even enter a Mormon Temple but when the Mormon Church came under intense political pressure in the 70′s to change this racist thinking, God somehow removed the curse and everything was o.k. afterwards. Probably an angel left some golden plates in a cave somewhere in a mountain telling them to accept blacks or appeared to an elder in a dream telling them to do so…. Shades of Oral Roberts who was blessed with the visit of a 900 foot tall Jesus in the desert in the 70′s and was told to start Oral Roberts University and a few years later had the visit of a somewhat shorter Jesus in his bedroom threatening him with death if he did not raise 8 million dollars! The stupidity of some people who keep on believing this crap boggles the mind . Maybe they’re right in saying we are not descended from Apes because it would be an insult to Apes!