Posted on 10/28/2003 6:39:55 AM PST by presidio9
Hundreds of Long Islanders stood outside Mepham High School yesterday to blast a handful of out-of-town picketers who said teaching tolerance of gays led to the football hazing incident that has rocked the school. The picketers - eight family members from a church in Topeka, Kan., gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Bellmore school at 7 a.m. waving anti-gay signs, including one that read "God Hates Fags."
"When you teach children that it's okay to indulge in any kind of sex act that they like ... that it's okay to be gay, it is inevitable that they will end up being violent and doing things that they shouldn't," said Margie Phelps, who protested with a handful of relatives.
Mepham High School has been in the national spotlight since three members of its varsity football team were accused of sodomizing younger players with objects as part of a hazing ritual in August, while the team was at a preseason camp in Preston Park, Pa.
The eight protesters - four children among them - were drowned out by some 400 counterdemonstrators organized by a gay rights group and an equal number of angry local parents.
"Anyone that has a pulse in their body will realize that there is no link between sexual assault, which is about power, and somebody being gay," said David Kilmnick, executive director of Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth.
A small army of Nassau cops avoided trouble by keeping the groups apart.
At one point, a Mepham resident yelled to the Christian group, "Go back to your trailer park." Others in the Mepham group carried posters saying, "God loves everybody."
"This is just a radical group that wants to send a message of hate," said Marge Congello, whose son, an eagle scout, is a senior at Mepham. "Bellmore is good community. We are being punished by a very bad incident."
Debbie Saladino, 37, shook her head in disbelief as she surveyed the family of protesters in front of her daughter's school.
"How they can turn hazing into homosexuality is beyond me," she said. Then she spotted a sign held by one of the Phelps sisters reading, "Thank God for Sept. 11th."
"That's a travesty. They have the audacity to come to New York and insult 9/11. A lot of people lost family members," Saladino said.
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Gay and Lesbian Youth?
This is a setup to discredit christians.
That's the sickest part of the whole story to me.
This is clearly a fringe group, but all Christians and all who want to tell the truth about the psychosis that is homosexuality will be painted with this broad brush. Even the title says "Hate from the Heartland" rather than "A Hate Group from the Heartland" or even "A Fringe Group Descends on Long Island."
G-d clearly does not hate fags and clearly G-d does not hate America.
But I'm sure G-d is as unhappy with all who paint those who do not support homosexuality as normative with a broad brush as He is with these people.
Shalom.
They took their children out of school, made up several signs, and drove half way across the country to a specific location.
Unwitting?
Will you allow a friendly edit?
Shalom.
Maybe I should have said "unintentionally"...
This statement is a lie when the following is considered:
Most of the nation has not heard about two homosexual men who face the death penalty in Arkansas, charged with raping and torturing a 13-year-old boy to death last month.
The brutal crime against Prairie Grove, Ark., seventh-grader Jesse Dirkhising -- who was raped repeatedly and suffocated with his own underwear in the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 26 -- was reported by news organizations in Arkansas and also covered by newspapers in Oklahoma and Tennessee. But the boy's death did not receive national media attention. Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, said he is not surprised .
Joshua Macave Brown, 22, and Davis Don Carpenter, 38, described as homosexual "lovers" in a police affidavit, have both been charged with capital murder and six counts of rape and are being held without bond in connection with Jesse's death.
According to the affidavit, Mr. Brown told police that on the morning of Sept. 26, he sneaked up on the boy, tied his hands behind his back, placed his pair of undershorts in the teen's mouth and secured the briefs with a bandana and duct tape. He said he blindfolded the youth, bound him to a bed and repeatedly sodomized him.
Mr. Brown said he went to the kitchen to get a sandwich and that when he returned to the bedroom, Jesse was not breathing. He alerted his roommate, who called 911. Asked about Mr. Carpenter's role during the crime, Mr. Brown said Mr. Carpenter stood at the bedroom door and masturbated as he watched
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