Sam Harris writes in his book The End of Faith with an eye-opening candor about the dangers of taking political correctness too far. His position can probably be summarized well with a quote I saw somewhere: “You don’t want to be so openminded that your brain falls out.” I am not sure if being PC is what motivated a principal to discipline teachers for booing a speaker, who happened to be black but also very much anti-gay, during his speech at an MLK event at a high school close to Seattle, Washington. The sad thing is that the invitation of this African-American pastor signals homophobic sentiments within the student body at this Washington State high school: well, first, they invited Hutcherson to speak at their MLK event and now they’re harassing students who refuse to sign a petition to end the “Day of Silence,” which is supposed to raise awareness to just that kind of behavior: homophobia. How bad anti-gay is Hutcherson? He refers to the school’s gay/straight alliance as a “sex club” and his organization, Watchmen, had this to say: “Your generation beat the Nazis, and our country beat the Communists. Together we will defeat the homosexuals!” And a couple of days later, a junior high school student killed a classmate, possibly because the victim was gay.

And, as Sam Harris also points out, religion is behind this: Hutcherson is a preacher. The anti-gay movement on the West coast is driven by Russian immigrants who proudly attend evangelical churches. Somehow, hearing voices, these people think they have a god-given right to harass and even kill people. This is exactly why religions are so dangerous!