BY NATASHA BARSOTTI - That’s right. That’s the best some imaginative Ohio school authorities could do when repeatedly approached by 15-year-old gay teenager Zach and his mom about the homophobia he faced in school.

But then came the video of Zach being mercilessly beaten by a fellow Unioto High School student. In the midst of a bevy of other students standing around and watching, or getting out of the way, Zach’s attacker rained punch after punch on the teen as he covered up on the ground, the smacking sounds as they landed on Zach’s body more than clearly audible.

“I don’t even remember how many times he hit me,” Zach told a broadcast reporter.

One of the apparent catalysts for the beating? A comment the attacker allegedly posted on a Facebook photo of Zach: “Check out the definition of a fag.”

The more-than-sickening incident was not the first time Zach had endured a physical attack. He’d been hit in the face before but tried to ignore the violence.

Zach says one genius of a school administrator had this to say to him and his mother: “There’s a few gay kids in school, and you’re the only ones I have a problem with. So what can you do to tone yourself down?”

Mom was incredulous: “Wait a minute: you want my son to change, but you don’t want this bully to change?"

Enter the ACLU of Ohio. It is going to represent Zach in possible legal action against the district.

The all-too-familiar $64-million question for governments and school authorities everywhere? Why not spend the money on equipping schools and the future adults they’re supposed to be educating to respect difference and diversity instead of on lawyers to fight off the lawsuits that will keep coming if you fail to act on behalf of your students?

Just sayin’!

 

Check out the YouTube video here:  

BY ANDREA HOUSTON - Perhaps the best way to fight the Toronto Sun is to hit them where it hurts: their income.

Toronto activist Justin Beach thinks so. That's why he has launched Operation Sunset, a new campaign aimed at shining some light on the Sun's role in helping spread hate.

Beach is asking people to send a message to The Sun by not supporting its advertisers. Consider shopping at stores other than The Bay or HMV this holiday season. Go to Mr. Sub instead of Subway.

Over the next few weeks, Beach will be periodically publishing the names of Sun advertisers on the website. The first batch includes The Bay, Porter Airlines, Subway, HMV and Ontario Energy Group.

"Advertising is where The Sun earns its money," he says. "Also, The Sun supports the Ford administration that is trying to close libraries, parks, reduce service on the TTC and lay-off public workers.

"It seems irresponsible for Toronto companies to continue to support a paper that wants to seriously damage the standard of living."

The campaign is targeted at the Toronto Sun, which Beach describes as a "a right-wing propaganda machine," as opposed to the Sun News Network, which everyone everywhere describes as a right-wing propaganda machine.

Toronto Sun publisher Mike Power could not be reached for comment.

The Sun pulled out of the Ontario Press Council in July. At the time, John Honderich — a former publisher of the Star and the current chair of Torstar's board of directors — called the decision “most disturbing,” adding “Sun Media will abide by its own standards of journalism and not be accountable to anyone.”

In October, the Toronto Sun refused to apologize for running an ad in its Oct 2 edition that activists have called transphobic.

The ad, from the Institute for Canadian Values, is a slightly modified version of a full-page ad that ran in the National Post on Sept 24 and Sept 28. Following a social media outcry, the National Post issued an apology and stated that the proceeds from the ad sale would be donated to a queer charitable organization. 

A version of the advertisement subsequently ran for weeks on Sun TV.

Then this month, Chris Bolton, the chair of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) announced he plans to file a formal complaint against Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party and Sun Media over homophobic campaign flyers that were distributed during the provincial election and a transphobic television ad campaign that aired for three weeks following it. 

Media companies should realize there are consequences for what they do, says Beach. "It's important for people to realize that where you choose to do business is a form of democracy." 

Follow the campaign on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

Follow Xtra reporter Andrea Houston on Twitter at @dreahouston. 

Stock your cupboards and prepare for Y2GAY.

A hilarious new short film from Australia documents the manic efforts of a hobbit-like homophobe as he prepares for the coming of "Y2GAY" in a bunker stocked with "straight nonperishables" and Ricky Martin DVDs. His wife is less than enthusiastic about her husband's obsession.

The film was a finalist in Australia's Tropfest, the largest short film festival in the world.

 

 

Watch other finalists, including the winner, here.

The superficially "pro-gay" face of homophobia — which employs phrases like "reparative therapies" or "pastoral care" — has the potential to be far more destructive than the lyrics of a 25-year-old pop song. A kinder, gentler homophobia, in the media and in classrooms, uses language that appears sympathetic and inclusive yet masks the same old bigotry.

Yesterday a Conservative member of the European Parliament, Roger Helmer, tweeted: "Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to 'turn' a consenting homosexual?" When asked about the tweet, Helmer maintained his intention wasn't anti-gay.

Helmer, who insisted last year that he sees himself "as liberal and tolerant on the question of homosexuality," told the Press Association that he had merely been asking "a question" about why psychiatrists were banned from offering therapy for homosexuality.

"I am always surprised by the instant indignation of a strident minority," he said. "I am making a comparison between a lifestyle choice of a homosexual who would prefer not to be a homosexual and a lifestyle choice of a woman who would prefer to be a man ..."

^{Big smile from MEP Roger Helmer.}

The question comes as a psychotherapist in the UK, who practises a method of therapy called Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE), faces the loss of her accreditation from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

Lesley Pilkington, 60, a psychotherapist for 20 years, was exposed by Patrick Strudwick, a gay journalist with The Independent who told Pilkington he was unhappy with his homosexual lifestyle and that he “wanted to leave it."

In May 2009, Mr Strudwick attended a therapy session at Mrs Pilkington’s private practice, based at her home in Chorleywood, Herts, and recorded the session on a tape machine strapped to his stomach.

In the disciplinary letter sent to Mrs Pilkington, she is accused by BACP of “praying to God to heal him [Strudwick] of his homosexuality.” She is also accused of having an “agenda that homosexuality is wrong and that gay people can change and that you allegedly attempted to inflict these views on him.” 

Like Helmer, Pilkington doesn't see what she's doing as homophobic. Instead, she sees her efforts as supportive.

 Mrs Pilkington, whose 29-year-old son is homosexual, said she was motivated by a desire to help others. “He [my son] is heterosexual. He just has a homosexual problem,” she said last week.

Helmer and Pilkington are part of a new breed of homophobia our mainstream media seems to be largely ignoring. Instead of a hateful face — threatening hell-fire and damnation or violence — it uses terms like "reparative" or, in the case of the Ontario Catholic School Board, "pastoral care."

Case in point: a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen applauding the efforts of Tom D'Amico, a superintendent for the Ottawa Catholic School Board.

"A student who is openly gay in our schools, we want all of our students and staff to accept [them]," said Tom D'Amico, a superintendent for the Ottawa Catholic School Board. "We don't want to see them marginalized in any manner." 

Sounds great on the surface. D'Amico's efforts have been cited by others (including gay CUPE president Fred Hahn) as an example of a Catholic board that, unlike the Halton board, embraces its gay students. D'Amico says he "does not intend to use the Scripture to marginalize anyone."

Yet we learn one paragraph later:

Here in Ottawa, D'Amico said the English Catholic school board doesn't use the name "gay-straight alliance" because the Assembly of Ontario Bishops -- to whom school boards look for spiritual guidance -- prefer a name that reflects a more general focus on equity and social justice.  

So the board, is, in fact, using the scripture to marginalize students proud to declare themselves "gay," but the article is so concerned with convincing us how progressive the Ottawa Catholic School Board is, it doesn't explain this glaring contradiction.

Like Helmer and Pilkington, D'Amico frames his efforts as supportive of his gay students:

"I don't focus on the title; I focus on the objectives and the end result the group is trying to achieve in the schools," D'Amico said. "We don't want to create a group whose title may result in increased bullying, as opposed to decreasing it and creating better understanding of individual differences."  

The Ottawa Catholic board, like the Halton Catholic board, prohibits gay-straight alliances, only they do it without using the word "ban."

It's time the media started asking the right questions and calling out this type of discrimination for the homophobia it is. 

The BBC is defending its decision to include an interview with an anti-gay fundamentalist in a news report aired last week about the birth of Elton John and David Furnish's surrogate child. The broadcaster says it was an effort to present "all sides of the debate."

The report aired Dec 28 on BBC's News at Six. It features just one interview, with fundamentalist Stephen Green from a group called Christian Voice, who says: "This isn’t just a designer baby for Sir Elton John, this is a designer accessory... Now it seems like money can buy him anything, and so he has entered into this peculiar arrangement... A baby needs a mother, and it seems an act of pure selfishness to deprive a baby of a mother."

In December 2009, Green was quoted in a Christian Voice press release defending a proposed Ugandan law that would make homosexuality punishable by death: "a parliamentarian in Uganda is trying to protect his nation’s children."

The BBC item conveniently neglects to mention that the person they found to publicly condemn John and Furnish would be cool with a government sentencing the couple to death for sodomy.  

PinkNews reports that a BBC spokesman defended the decision to include Green:

"The BBC claim that there is genuine debate about gay couples having surrogate children and that it was right for the BBC to find someone who was opposed to the practise as the only interview in the report."

The controversy stemming from the BBC's efforts to provide "balance" is regrettably familiar to followers of Canadian mainstream media, where it's become commonplace to encounter the opinions of evangelical Charles McVety in reports on issues related to the gay community.

Back in April of last year you could've used the minute hand of a clock to measure the elapsed time between The Globe and Mail's trumpeting of McVety's opposition to Ontario's revised sex education curriculum on page A1 — the Globe's most prominent editorial real estate — and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's decision to abandon the curriculum.

The April 21 article, titled "The end of innuendo: Ont schools making sex education more explicit," reports that opposition to the curriculum "came to light" when "members of a religious, 'family-focused' coalition threatened to pull their children out of school on May 10 unless Premier Dalton McGuinty abandons the changes." It continues:

Christian right leader Charles McVety, who is also part of the coalition, said it is unconscionable to teach children as young as eight years old gender identity and sexual orientation. He accused the Premier of listening to "special interest groups with an agenda," including former education minister Kathleen Wynne, who is openly gay.

The article makes no effort to explain what the "agenda" might be, but after McVety's recent censure by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) for violating industry standards — in part for his views on the motivation behind the curriculum — we now know more about what inspired his opposition.

The CBSC decision includes this transcript from the Jan 17, 2010, edition of McVety's show, The Word:

When we send little Johnny and little Jane to school, not to learn to be homosexuals and lesbians. We send them there to learn reading, writing and arithmetic and history and all these wonderful things, but unfortunately there is an activist group that is afoot that wants to change our curriculum.  Why?  Because unfortunately they have an insatiable appetite for sex, especially with young people.  And there’re not enough of them, so they want to proselytize your children and mine, our grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals.

So the leader of the successful charge against the curriculum was motivated by his belief that there is a gay agenda to convert children to homosexuality, because of an "insatiable appetite for sex." Either The Globe and Mail didn't report this or McVety left it out when he talked to reporters from the paper. It's a significant omission, particularly considering this twisted theory caused the CBSC to rebuke McVety and Crossroads Television Ontario (CTS) to temporarily pull his show.

If McVety's homophobic delusions about gay conspiracies to convert children aren't enough to make our mainstream media stop taking him seriously, perhaps they should take a look at a recent Jewish Tribune article examining the CBSC's ruling after the ruling was misrepresented in the National Post. McVety defends himself against the charges:

“They accuse me of saying that homosexuals prey on children. I never said that,” Rev McVety told the Jewish Tribune. “I didn't imply it."

According to the transcripts included in the CBSC decision, he unequivocally said homosexuals prey on children.

Let's hope the Canadian mainstream media's 2011 new year's resolutions include removing Christian ministers with records of untruthfulness from their contact lists.