A Title Should Go Here

Ken Hutcherson is a lunatic or a jerk. Yikes, that's rough.

Maybe I'll make it more palatable by invoking CS Lewis. I hear, as wrong as he may ever be, he's magic. So, a la Lewisian rhetorical constructs: Ken Hutcherson is a lunatic, jerk, or savior.

In case you're a decent human being, Ken Hutcherson is one of those athlete turned religious guru phenoms and lords it over a mega church in Kirkland, Washington. His specialty is gay-panic.

He claims to have been appointed as a Special Envoy to Latvia by the Bush Administration to discuss the crises homosexuals are instigating throughout Eastern Europe and what role The Gays had in instigating the Holocaust. That's delusional. Delusional is crazy. Oh sure, Latvia exists, and he has built a number of ties, ironically enough, with Eastern European proto-fascist Christians but the Bush administration denies he has ever been given the official status of "Special Envoy" or undertaken diplomatic missions on behalf of our country.

That sounds like something a lunatic would say.

...

Well, now I find myself in the strange position of having to believe something out of the Bush administration. I find myself like an inverted Ignatius of Loyola; should the Bush Administration say black is black, I would have to disagree for the sake of my soul.

Now I should say that bit of evidence may be suspect. I guess it's not entirely beyond the pale to imagine a former linebacker with a Bible college degree and no training in diplomacy would be given an appointment by this administration. Though if it was consistent with their MO (modus operandi, not the horrid state Missouri*), given his credentials he would be appointed to the Supreme Court.

He may also be delusional because he sees the threat of homosexuality everywhere. I don't mean that he sees gay people everywhere; we all do that (yes even you Snoqualmie, WA). I mean he sees the threat of homosexuality as a strategically orchestrated campaign to make people gay or even subjugate the world to the rule of some Gay Illuminati perpetrated by the highest levels of the corporate and political world. That sounds delusional as well, or maybe more symptomatic of some sort of paranoia or antisocial pathology. I think we can make the case that he is paranoid though it would be tough to make the case that his paranoia is a disorder. It hardly interferes with his life or causes him harm; in fact it has become his bread and butter. He is all about successfully converting the generalized antipathy towards some idea of gay into a direct and pointed malevolence... and a paycheck. He's built himself quite an empire on the backs of gay people. Now if I were interested in working blue I would connect all of this gay-panic on Hutcherson's part to the "backs of gay people" line in a perfectly played punchline suggesting he's just another tragic closet-case.

Not this time. There are more important concerns.

Which brings us to the second possibility, Ken Hutcherson may be a jerk. He is currently taking credit for leading a protest against the "Day of Silence" activities at Mt. Si High School wherein a number of students walked out to show their disapproval of and opposition to the Day of Silence, or more specifically, their opposition to saying it's not okay for students to call each other fag, dyke, pussy, ho, and all the other not so subtle ways young people make life hell for each other. This is what The Day of Silence is about: essentially calling out the high school culture and the powers/adults that support it. What it's calling out is that adolescent culture that is really just a non-perfected adult culture. Of course adults aren't as ham-fisted with the name calling and hate because we've had years of practice and place-putting to set things right. If you've ever witnessed a group of teenage boys call each other "fag" or "woman" as putdowns, you see they are still learning how to get all that bigotry just right. It's cute in the way that maggots must be cute because they're baby flies. Babies are always cute.

Anyway, that's what the Day of Silence is for, saying that brand of becoming an adult is not okay.

Look, I get it, you're convinced the Bible says something about some thing we call homosexuality. It's a do not do. You're absolutely positive it says that. Great. Hooray for you. You have to be a dick about it?

Ken Hutcherson supported a group of students who walked out of school and led a demonstration for the right to harass and bully and he's happy about it.

Really. It's a success for him to get 600+ high school students (85 athletes**) to defend their right to call other kids fag. That sounds like a jerk to me (it also doesn't sound like all that much of a challenge).

But wait, isn't the Day of Silence all about tolerance and diversity? How can you say you are tolerant if you won't tolerate my intolerance? That just makes you a hypocrite.

Well first let me say, "Who keeps letting you in here?" Second, "You're an idiot." You don't really mean to ask anything; you're looking for a way to pardon your fascism as necessary for dialogue and democracy. I could respond that their is no tolerance qua tolerance and that the use of it as necessary in an open democracy precludes your understanding of it in light of your desire to dominate, but you would just blink a couple of times and call me a fag. So, let me be clear. I think it is right for someone who thinks there is something wrong with some such and such to say so and Ken Hutcherson should be allowed to be as dumb as he wants to be in doing that. But it is possible that a tolerant people could not tolerate the existence of an intolerant in the same way a body that values growth would not rightly value a cancer.

Anyway, someone should point out that he's being dumb. Hey, that someone is me.


*To be fair, I only say Missouri is horrid because of the horrid experiences I had there.
**That's right, I said it.