Originally published at: After anti-LBGTQ+ parents had a school play canceled, students raised $75k to put it on anyways | Boing Boing
…
14 Likes
24 Likes
Great work, kids!
25 Likes
go kids, GO! 
22 Likes
From this article
Unfortunately, on the second day of auditions, some adults and parents within the NACS community caught wind of the play’s contents and began calling the administration in protest, some using threatening tones. The following morning, the play was called off due to “safety concerns for the students involved”.
The police are investigating those people who made comments with “threatening tones” after the administrators forwarded those potential threats to the safety of the students to law enforcement, right? crickets
And if any of those students are eligible and are going to be sticking around, maybe they should consider running for a seat on the school board themselves.
36 Likes
They should video the play and make it available to donors. That way it will get more exposure than the bigot parents could have imagined (and perhaps teach yet another bunch of hateful censors about the Streisand Effect).
29 Likes
Christian fascists have decided that keeping ideas out of people’s heads is somehow possible,
8 Likes
And there is hope for the next generation.
9 Likes
The haters need to take a good look at how their petty minds empowered the youth. You tried to kick the kids down and they stood firm and tall. If you had reasonably talked to them, respectfully explained your point of view you might have built a bridge. Instead, it’s a bonfire and you old weenies are getting roasted.
11 Likes
They would probably have to negotiate the rights to do this. If the rightsholder was smart, they’d let the kids run it gratis.
6 Likes
While I try to avoid naively pinning my hopes on the inherent betterness of youth, and have definitely taught kids that had internalized, and were happy to propagate fascist ideology, it’s also true in my experience that the most harmful censorious chilling effects in my time as a teacher have either been the result of angry conservative parents or admins spooked at the prospect of them, and the most joyful organization against that bullshit has been done by kids themselves.
9 Likes
So much this.
The fundamental problem with local politics everywhere right now is the bullying that a tiny minority of conservatives are getting away with to bend the world to their will. This is happening even up here in Canada. Drag time story events have been cancelled in a few places because the library gets nasty threatening calls. They cancel the event “for everyone’s safety” but the people making threats do not appear to have any consequences to themselves.
How is this okay that people can go around threatening anyone doing anything they don’t like and get it canceled? As a society we need to stand up to this a lot better.
15 Likes
That’s the power of stochastic terrorism. If one side is known for occasional homicidal rage preceded by exactly these kinds of threats, even a well-meaning and supportive administrator might feel compelled to call off an event.
10 Likes
Nah, fuck 'em. Polite bigots are still bigots.
10 Likes
I’d be curious to know if this sort of thing ends up having some blowback on the people who tried to scuttle the play; both because there was a public demonstration that their position was sufficiently unpopular that people rallied behind it; but because of how petty it makes them look.
I don’t mean to diminish the importance of the play to those who are participating in it; but I’d bet money that anyone without specially evolved pearl-clutching appendages, even if they were more or less happy to let the censors make it go away originally, is going to find it hard to avoid the fact that having the school play continue as intended, and a bunch of students, teachers, and parents do their thing, is going to be just…banal…(in a wholesome way) in a way that will make freaking out about it feel just…dumb.
How do you feel good about your righteous crusade when, after it flounders, nothing bad seems to happen? The drama kids have their fun, cats and dogs continue living together because they can actually do that just fine when socialized with one another properly; nobody turns into a pillar of salt, etc.
Reminds me of when I participated in the GSA, years back, in high school. We got banned, it was a big to-do, Important People got involved and exerted pressure. Joke was; aside from whatever minor scraps of good we did purely by implying the existence of accepting peers, we basically didn’t do much of anything as an organization while extant. Getting banned, though, now suddenly even the block of parents who were not really on board with this ‘GSA’ stuff; but were not happy about the machinations by which a school club was taken out and terminated, were worked up; and everyone got to watch as the crusaders moved in to purge and…mostly nothing happened. We’d never been nearly organized or motivated enough to be up to whatever they were freaking out about; and the whole episode just ended up making them look like they were tilting at windmills. We chalked it up as the biggest success in or organizational history and moved our meetings across the street from campus so we were no longer under the relevant jurisdiction.
7 Likes
Nothing such. There are unquestionably young fascists, just as there are Black, gay and trans fascists. But, the proportion is the key element. Gen Z and (what are they calling themselves? Gen Alpha?) are proportionately far more accepting and progressive in their views than Boomers, the fascists are very aware of this (witness their efforts to prevent college kids from voting and even raise the voting age) and are taking steps to cement their views into the fabric of society before they lose the ability. We will never eliminate that fascistic tendency, but I would be happy if they were driven back under their rock again. I do feel bad for the slimy things that live under those rocks. They don’t deserve these neighbors.
12 Likes
That’s certainly what’s happening. The administrators in question are usually the same ones who arranged the event in the first place so I’m sure they feel awful about having to cancel it. Their hands are tied, though- if there’s even the faintest hint that a threat is credible, they have to cancel.
Hence my focus on society in general. Police need to look into such threats. The public needs to support these administrators in print and in person. The press needs to shame these stochastic terrorists. The police need to provide protection if needed so the event can proceed anyway. All that sort of thing.
9 Likes
I wouldn’t necessarily put much hope in ‘betterness’; but the tendency to normalize the status quo(while dangerous in many contexts) is probably working in their favor in at least some cases.
By way of example; Massachussets got same-sex marriage in 2004. Predictably, the sky did not fall. That means that there’s now a supply of people ranging from 0 to just under 19 years old for whom it has always had same-sex marriage with results that could hardly be described as socially calamitous. Doesn’t prevent any of them from becoming dicks about it of their own volition; but defaults tend to be pretty powerful things in absence of specific motivation; and they’ve got the new default.
In the abstract strength-of-moral-fiber sense they get no credit for having been provided with better defaults vs. the people who were provided with worse ones; but in practice the same moral fibrousness is likely to produce people who, for practical purposes, are better. “He was a product of his time” isn’t required to mean that there’s something monstrous you are tap-dancing around(just usually…)
7 Likes
That’s a good point. Couple that with exposure — the same kids now know people who are “other” (POC, LGBTQ+, immigrants, etc.) and in many cases these are also close friends. Fewer of the younger generation see the “problem,” just that elders are being bigots.
It’s one of the reasons fundamentalists work so hard to create hermetically sealed communities for their members. They know their BS will start falling apart otherwise.
7 Likes
I wondered what all the fuss was about:
Cross dressing, but of course 
9 Likes
