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Demands by the "tolerant" aka a bigoted queer, "Ole Miss must ban players -- now"

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I'm a gay Muslim

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Oct 27, 2013, 9:18:06 PM10/27/13
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Let's get right to the point here -- Ole Miss has to suspend
every single football player who was allegedly involved in
hurling gay slurs during a campus play Tuesday night about
Matthew Shepard's murder.

Period.

I love the South, it's my home and always will be my home, but I
hate ignorance much more than I love the South.

And we have way too much ignorance down here, always have.

Ole Miss has to take a stand against ignorance of all kinds and
suspend the football players who reportedly interrupted a play
about intolerance by behaving intolerantly. The school also
needs a major wake-up call. I'd suggest a campus-wide
examination of gay rights.

And if Ole Miss won't suspend these players, then the SEC needs
to do it.

Already people are tweeting me about "free speech," and asking
why the "liberal media" cares so much about this story.

First, learn how to make better arguments. You have the right to
say or write anything in this country thanks to the First
Amendment. It's the single most important freedom we have. So
you can type "your gay," to people you disagree with to your
heart's content on Twitter and neither the government nor
spellcheck can do anything to you.

What you don't have is freedom from consequences. Right now, the
government isn't arresting or investigating Ole Miss players for
allegedly behaving like boorish idiots. But the public is
reacting with complete and total disgust to a story that shocks
it.

Second, I'm not a member of the "liberal media," whatever that
is. I'm about as middle of the road as it comes in the country.
I'm anti-idiot and pro-markets, this means I can believe in
evolution and support American industry. Shocker, I know.

The reason this is a big story is for the same reason most
stories become viral these days on the Internet -- because the
story is shocking and people can't believe what they're reading.
The rest of the country is in complete and total disbelief that
Mississippi college students -- ostensibly the smartest,
youngest and most cosmopolitan citizens of the Magnolia State --
would do something like this during a live performance about
intolerance.

Per the original article , which received so much Internet
traffic Thursday the entire website was unavailable for much of
the morning:

According to the play's director and theater faculty member Rory
Ledbetter, some audience members used derogatory slurs like
"fag" and heckled both cast members and the characters they were
portraying for their body types and sexual orientations.
Ledbetter said the audience's reactions included "borderline
hate speech."

"I am the only gay person on the cast," junior theater major
Garrison Gibbons said. "I played a gay character in the show,
and to be ridiculed like that was something that really made me
realize that some people at Ole Miss and in Mississippi still
can't accept me for who I am."

It's not just hate speech, it's public hate speech in a
university theater, hurled by the most famous members of the
undergraduate student body.

The rest of the country is completely and totally amazed that
this could happen in 2013.

Just when you think the state of Mississippi and Ole Miss can't
humiliate itself anymore, it goes and humiliates itself all over
again.

You'd think a state that was so horribly wrong about racism
might be self-aware enough to see that it's repeating the same
errors with gays.

You might think that, but you'd be wrong.

If The Onion ran a headline saying, "Ole Miss students interrupt
play about gay intolerance by hurling intolerant gay slurs,"
would you have thought it was too far-fetched?

I would have.

Then Tuesday night happened.

It's not that I'm surprised many of my fellow Southerners are
exceedingly homophobic, it's that several college students at
one of the state's flagship institutions also seemingly share
the same beliefs. These weren't slurs reportedly uttered in
private by grandpas and grandmas, they were alleged public
assaults by people young enough to live in a multi-cultural
society.

I spend a ton of time sticking up for the South, but here I've
got no defense.

For some reason a decent segment of the Southern male population
still feels like the biggest insult you can throw at another man
is that he's gay.

Generally, if written, this insult is spelled, "your gay," and
is accompanied by a Bible verse on a Twitter profile.

Rather than combat every idiot one at a time on Twitter and e-
mail, I've just co-opted their most stinging "insult" and raised
them one level of "awfulness." Okay, I'm a gay Muslim. What else
do you have for me? My hope was that by ridiculing the absurdity
of an insult by accepting and embracing the absurdity of that
insult and then raising it to another level, it might actually
cause the idiots among us to think about how stupid they look.
But then I see the "first amendment" and "liberal media" tweets
and I just throw up my hands in disgust.

And stop hiding behind your religion too, "I don't hate the
sinner, I hate the sin."

So being gay is a sin? So you really think gay people choose to
be gay?

Is this real life?

Being gay isn't a sin, because it's the way you're born.

Being stupid is a sin. Combat something you can actually control
-- read a damn book.

Sadly, the only way to fight idiots is with punishments and
consequences, not false and empty apologies.

That's why Ole Miss needs to take the proper stand here and
suspend every involved player from football this weekend. And if
Hugh Freeze won't do it, then Ole Miss chancellor Daniel Jones
needs to act. And if the chancellor won't act, then SEC
commissioner Mike Slive needs to step in.

Thursday afternoon, university chancellor Dan Jones and
athletics director Ross Bjork released a statement:

While we work to determine with certainty who disrupted the
Laramie Project play, we want everyone within our university
community and beyond to know that we strongly condemn the
behavior exhibited Tuesday night. As a member of the Ole Miss
family, each of us has a responsibility to be accountable for
our actions, and these individuals will be held accountable. Our
investigation will determine the degree to which any and all
students were involved.

As a first step to addressing behavior at the performance
Tuesday night, we will meet today with the freshman student-
athletes (from various sports) who attended the play and have a
dialogue about what happened, about our university-wide
commitment to inclusivity and civility, and about the important
role they play in representing the university. It is clear that
some students badly misrepresented the culture of this
university. From there, we will work with Student-Affairs and
the Bias Incident Response Team to determine the facts and
appropriate next steps.

Incidents like this remind all educators that our job is to
prepare our students to be leaders in life during their years on
campus and after they graduate from Ole Miss. This behavior by
some students reflects poorly on all of us, and it reinforces
our commitment to teaching inclusivity and civility to young
people who still have much to learn. We will be engaging our
student-athletes with leaders on the subject of individuality
and tolerance, so we can further enforce life lessons and
develop them to their fullest potential.

On behalf of our 22,000 students, our faculty, and our staff, we
apologize.

Every single football player involved in this incident needs to
be suspended. And all non-athlete students who were involved
should face severe sanction as well.

Ole Miss has rarely been on the forefront of social progress,
but at least it has the chance to do the right thing here.

Otherwise, the past really is never past at Ole Miss.

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2013/10/03/ole-miss-must-ban-
players-now/?intcmp=obinsite

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