The discussion is currently into the 70s of comments, but here is mine and the few folks who responded directly to me:

Like EJW, I grew up in Delaware, but, unlike EJW, I grew up in the southern half, the set-your-watch-50-years-back part.

It's even trickier than that, though. The unilateral Christinity there, is not so much targeted anti-semitism (I rarely heard the sort of "Jews are greedy conniving Jesus killers" that we typically think of. Rather, the fundamentalist mindset that dominates Sussex county (Where IR school district is) seems to believe that any thing that challanges or falls outside their specific spiritual/political landscape is an opportunity for evangelism. So whether it's the single Jewish student (There was only one Jew in my graduating class, too), or the gay men and women who trek to Rehoboth beach every summer, these are treated as opportunities to spread God's love, or at least a very specific brand of doctrine.

Because any one of the people targeted by this suit will feel like their actions were framed out of benevolence, accusations of hate speech are met with bafflement--"We were only trying to save her lost soul."

What makes all of this particularly insidious, then, is that our shock, our horror, is read as more evidence that the world is godless, and needs more fervent prayer and ministry to the lost.

I am all for standing up to anti-seminitism, and queer bashing, and anti-muslim sentiment, and anti-urban prejudice, all of which is a boom industry in Southern DE and hunderds of rural counties like it around the nation. But I think we need to think very carefully about ways to respond to this worldview that aren't condescending, not because the condescension isn't warranted, but it may not be effective; quite the contrary, it may only galvanize the advocates of the offending discourse.

From Steve LaBonne:

Sorry, Cats, I've had it up to here with treating this kind of vicious insanity with kid gloves. There is no place for it in a sane, modern society and it needs to be fought tooth and nail, not coddled. And the "they're not real Christians" band of Christians need to stop whimpering and get their asses on the front lines of this fight.

From Frowner:

Cats and Dogma--Actually, I think that Christians who claim to spread "God's love" when they're really harassing Jews/Muslims/people who are insufficiently 'Christian' are being pretty darn disingenuous. It's all about the libidinal thrill they get from being aggressive in a sanctioned cause. They like to be aggressive, but they also like to be victims. So they set up this ideology where they can do both. They get a lot of nasty, intense satisfaction from this, and that's what keeps them coming back to it. They don't call someone "jewboy" because they really, lovingly want to save his soul and they're just confused and misguided. They do it because it's fun to be cruel and they've got a way of thinking that (unlike the Christianity I grew up with) doesn't get in the way of cruelty but rather encourages it. The unpleasant thing about this neo-fundamentalism is that it's NOT about self-sacrifice and repression and wearing plain colors and never having enjoyable sex or doing anything frivolous--it's actually all about thoughtless ecstacy of a particularly nasty kind. That is, I don't think that taking their claims about "really wanting to save people's souls" at face value addresses why they do what they do.

From PhDyke:

Responding to EJW and Cats & Dogmas [sic]

Then as now, "It's downstate, what do you expect?" is an intellectually lazy answer. There are many bigots north of the Canal, and people working for change southward.

Remember: Wilmington schools weren't desegregated (by federal court order) until **1978**. And an law banning anti-gay workplace discrimination repeatedly fails in the state legislature, despite the overwhelming population of the north. (Downstate senators block the bill, upstate senators allow them to do it.)

Sure, downstate Delaware is more rural, more conservative politically, and more religous. (It was a center of the Methodist revival movement.) It's also hosts the only wild, beautiful places-- wildlife refuges, tributaries, inland bays-- left in Delaware, since the "civilized" north has paved every square inch of New Castle County. It's also home to a large lesbian and gay community (mostly Rehoboth transplants, but some homegrown), including a gay-straight alliance at Cape Helopen High in Sussex Co. Given the choice of polluted, "progressive" north or rural, "conservative" south, it's not obvious to me which I'd prefer.

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Now, I think that some of these comments that respond directly to me misread my point, which is neither "We should treat Fundamentalist bigots with kid gloves, that they are in fact being "good Christians," or that being from Sussex explains all this away.

I am still deeply rooted there, since my folks still live there, and even though I distanced myself from that area during my time in the DC area, I find myself at WVU confronted with many of the same mindsets. I DO think, unlike frowner, that plenty of folks act this way because they really believe that they are doing good, but I also think those folks are flat out wrong. Whether following the Steve LaBonne logic will work is where I have to ruminate.

I grew up as a Sussex County fundamentalist, and my parents still are. I disagree with them often (though not always openly), and I've been inside the mindset enough to know that the ass-kicking progressive approach won't change their minds. Which is why my inital comment advocated another way, which may very well look like coddling.

The question of approach for me is not ethical, though (I feel pretty clearly that LaBonne and I agree on ethical grounds) but rather rhetorical. And then I wonder (as I work on an essay on performance audience and rhetoric) whether this is even an audience worth trying convince (not because they're intrinsically valueless, but because they're unconvinceable). It is part of why I don't openly confront my folks on a lot of subtly racist and openly homophobic stuff they pull.

I dunno. The story itself is pretty clearly appalling. How we individually and collectively respond to it and the ways that the scenario is reproduced in variations around the country remains the more pressing, and more troubling issue for me.