All of a sudden right wing Christian websites are stepping up to defend Brett Vanasdlen's alledged attack on Steven Velasquez.
Rev. Ted Pike had this to say on the truth tellers website [article]:
The police department of Champaign, Illinois is reported to be under pressure from higher authorities to increase its quota of hate crimes convictions. Brett Van Asdlen, an 18 year-old Christian college student on a baseball scholarship, didn’t know this. On April 12 he and a friend saw two homosexuals leaning on each other and holding hands, walking toward them on the sidewalk. “Look at those two guys holding hands,” Brett said to his friend and walked past them. According to Brett’s mother, the next thing he knew, one of the homosexuals (whom he perceived to be drunk) had grabbed him by the shoulder, putting his face up to Brett’s and repeatedly shouting, “What did you say?” Brett told him to go away several times and then pushed him. The homosexual fell over backwards. On his back, the homosexual told his partner to call the police. In eight minutes, four officers arrived. Two interviewed Brett and his friend and assured them there would be no problem. Brett had been physically accosted and detained, clearly an assault. The other two officers interviewed the homosexual, who was taken to the hospital.
For those of you, like me, who've never heard of Ted Pike he is director of the National Prayer Network in Clackamas, Oregon. Over at Right Wing Watch they have an article about him.
Since there were several witnesses it will be interesting to see how this all turns out.
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4 hours ago
2 comments:
I'll be VERY interested to hear how this all comes out and what the witnesses say happened - it doesn't seem likely that "look at those two guys holding hands" would elicit such a strong reaction.
That being said, I'm having a REALLY interesting conversation with some of my classes about the assumption that just because one is of a "minority" group, one is open-minded. I was telling my students that I take offense at Mike Wilbon's claim that, had there been more racial diversity on the staff of Golf Week magazine, the picture of the noose would never have made it on the cover (in response to Kelly Tilghman's gaff about Tiger Woods).
The assumption there is that one would have to be black to take issue with the image of the noose, and I'm here to tell you that you'd be hard-pressed to find someone as white as me, but you can bet your patootie that I'd have vetoed the cover if I were on staff.
We had a bit of this conversation a while ago about the comment you received. There are closed-minded people of ALL walks of life, and it is possible - in fact, likely - that there's violent retaliation from gays against straights for even perceived sleights. I'm CERTAINLY not saying that this is the case here - I know nothing about this incident - but I am saying that I don't discount the possibility.
People can be ignorant and people can get pushed to the brink, and just because someone's gay (or black, or handicapped) doesn't mean they're necessarily a righteous person anymore than my being straight or white or middle class automatically makes me a hater.
Gnome sane?
You and I follow the same school of thought on more than a couple of items but "live and let live" and "treat others how you wish to be treated" are high on the list.
Regarding the topic, two wrongs don't make a right.
As you can probably guess, I'm hoping that's not the case regarding this issue.
It's very obvious at least one person is lying.
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