You'd think, Jim, that "no name calling" would be a fairly, well, politically neutral stance, right?

Wrong.

National 'No Name-Calling' Week Irks Conservatives. Why? Because it's all about gays, see?

And of course there's this great example of moral equivalency:

One of GLSEN's most persistent critics is Warren Throckmorton, director of counseling at Grove City College, a Christian school outside Pittsburgh. His skeptical comments about "No Name-Calling Week" have been widely circulated this month on conservative Web sites.

"There's no question middle school can be a difficult place - I'm not advocating that any group gets mistreated," Throckmorton said in a telephone interview.

"But it will definitely make traditionally oriented teachers and parents and kids feel very uncomfortable, if they happen to object to homosexuality on moral grounds," he said of GLSEN's program. "If you disagree, you're hateful, you're bigoted, you're a homophobe. They're using name-calling to combat name-calling."

Story via pesky'.

:headdesk: Can't conservatives find some way to express their "traditional orientation" without name-calling? Oh, I get it--they're right so they shouldn't have to.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my pansexual agenda.

Yeah, but whether it is a politically neutral idea in the abstract doesn't really have anything to do with whether it is a politically neutral event in the execution, does it?

I mean, let's get real - the idea just happened to be developed by the New York-based Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, and just happens to center around "The Misfits," a book that just happens to be by an openly gay author about four middle schoolers, one of whom just happens to be gay (I just don't remember being so sexually aware in middle-school, but then again I was a nerd).

(sarcasm)Clearly, "no name calling week" is not the obvious gay recruiting drive that Spongebob Squarepants is (/sarcasm). At the same time, you would have to be putting your head in the sand to not think that the reason certain groups spearheaded this idea is because of the obvious homosexuality tolerance that organically builds itself into the program (especially since "faggot" and "gay" are two amazingly common middle-school insults). And why shouldn't they? It is a great place to start, because bullying is an awful problem, and sexual slurs are a big part of it. But I'm not sure someone pointing out the coincidental sponsorship is necessarily in the wrong (I haven't seen any of these critics calling for the abolition of the event).

This actually reminds me somewhat of when you see big adoption or teen abstinence events put on by pro-life groups. There is no question that adoption is a beautiful thing that can be embraced by anyone along the abortion spectrum. But in execution, some events can have a significantly stronger "pro-life" subtext than others. This always puts pro-choice forces in a sticky bind: How do you raise awareness of a group with an agenda promoting something that is, in theory, agendaless? And how do you do so without seeming petty and alarmist?

Actually, I think that there has been a bit of a stealth stink out in your neck of the woods - outraged parents complaining that a seemingly benign kid-friendly coffee shop (complete with a story hour) is actually nothing more than a shameful stealth Christian Recruiting Center.

Personally, I find all of these things silly extremism, but it is a silly extremism that runs both ways. So long as people use globally appealing issues to "stealth" controversial issues, there will be people on the other side of the aisle ready to call them on it (even if they only suspect such stealthing is going on).

See, I'm all for lefty groups finally getting their act together and realizing that the concept of language being important has to apply to them as well. That is, they can't think that nobody will care about what they call things.

The best part of the pullquote from Throckmorton is "They're using name-calling to combat name-calling." When you start getting into that sort of Hasselhoffian recursion, your troops' eyes start to glaze over.

The left has lost so many battles because of language ("liberal", "PC", etc) that it makes them look obtuse. Someone mentioned this in this forum recently; I believe it was in the context of that Lakoff book.

Read the Times article. Liked the last line concerning a child who "worships at the alter of Thomas the Tank Engine." The irony of this may go over some people's heads: Thomas is the creation of the Reverend Wilbert Awdrey (C of E). The Tomas website describes his original writings as "100 simple moral tales about the exploits and adventures of a group of railway engines given human personalities" which he wrote for his son. Now, I won't even get into the immorality of clergy having children (let alone some guy in Park Slope starting the Church! Listen, Buster, there is only one capital "C" Church and puting an exclamation mark at the end isn't going to keep you out of the fires of Hell), but for a Tory Cleric to be writing morality stories for our children is really just too much!