One of the constant, in-our-face arguments against any progress in LGBT rights or recognition is inevitably some variant on "Think of the children!" They really like the version that's about their children's delicate minds being "brainwashed" into tolerating queerness/gender variance by the mere presence of unashamed queers/transpeople. I know - being brainwashed into tolerance? Terrifying! But it turns out the real problem with it isn't that they don't want their children being brainwashed. They just want to have the chance to brainwash them first.
Enter Peter LaBarbera (aka Porno Pete, for his habit of "going undercover" to leather and lifestyle events to describe in graphic detail what those scary homos are really getting up to - seriously, it's a fucking obsession, he goes to Mr Leather EVERY YEAR pretty much) and his Homophobe-In-Training Camp, where students as young as 14 will listen to Porno Pete and his line-up of speakers, including Matt Barber, Ryan Sorba, and Greg Quinlan, for three days, teach them "how to answer the lies and myths that so readily emanate from the “GLBT” (“gay”) camp."
So it's not that they don't want their kids exposed to depictions of homosexuality/transness. It's just that they don't want them exposed to depictions of *actual* LGBTs. Instead, they want to shield them until they're old enough - at 14, mind you - to be trained in the hateful rhetoric of the movement and learn the version of LGBTness that is useful for that cause. Ahh, the all-too-common stink of conservative hypocrisy.
In all seriousness, snark aside, I am deeply disturbed and offended by the idea of taking high school freshmen and deliberately, systematically teaching them to hate like this. LGBT bullying is already a serious issue in our schools, and these people want to make it worse by combining the volatility of youthful emotions with focused training in anti-LGBT hate? That is a recipe for teenage hate crimes right there. And it is Not. Okay.
Let's just hope nobody signs up and the whole thing is a terrible flop.
