Earlier this week, CNN’s Dan Gilgoff reported that Exodus International was shutting down it annual “Day of Truth”:
A national Christian organization will stop sponsoring an annual event that encourages school students to “counter the promotion of homosexual behavior” because the event has become too divisive and confrontational, the group’s president told CNN on Wednesday.
“All the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace while treating their neighbors as they’d like to be treated, whether they agree with them or not,” said Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, the group that sponsored the event this year.
Called the Day of Truth, the annual April event has been pushed by influential conservative Christian groups as a way to counter to the annual Day of Silence, an event promoted by gay rights advocates to highlight threats against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.
In was just last year that Exodus took over running the Day of Truth from the creators at the Alliance Defense Fund, so it’ll be interesting to see if ADF will be willing to retake control over the effort.
If they do, they can probably expect the support of Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who tells Gilgoff that he is eager to see this sort of effort continue:
We stand ready to work with all pro-family groups to ensure that students continue to hear an alternative to the ideological indoctrination in support of the homosexual movement which has become all too prevalent in our public schools.
As we have repeatedly stated, we unequivocally condemn verbal or physical harassment or violence directed at any person, particularly a child, because of sexuality, religious beliefs, or for any other reason. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest any connection between those kinds of acts and the loving witness of Christian believers or the reasoned dialogue of pro-family activists.
We will never allow the slanders of activist groups that promote homosexual behavior to deter us from speaking the truth in love, and that includes the message that the choice to engage in homosexual conduct is a destructive one and that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions.
If FRC refuses to stop “speaking the truth in love” and wants to make sure that students continue to hear the Day of Truth’s message, it only makes sense for FRC to take over the organizing of this annual event, does it not?
