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This past weekend, the LGBT blog Pam's House Blend noted the curious silence of Pastor Ken Hutcherson regarding the 2010 National Day of Silence, devoted to highlighting and combatting anti-gay bullying and harassment:

"I refuse to stay silent!" That was Ken Hutcherson last year. This year, not a peep. Maybe Hutcherson finally recognizes that Washington is moving beyond his message of bigotry towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. After all, in 2009 Washington voters became the first in the nation to ratify a comprehensive domestic partnership law, and LGBT people have been added to the state's anti-discrimination and hate crimes laws with the blessing of the electorate.

Actually, Hutcherson did make some noise about the Day of Silence—only his noise-making was so aggressively stupid that even I, a devoted follower of all things Hutch, couldn't be bothered to make fun of it. From an email sent by Hutcherson to his Prayer Warriors on Friday April 9:

Dear Prayer Warriors,

The Snoqualmie Valley Record is not fair! Following is an ad I wanted to purchase and run in their newspaper but the Publisher made a personal decision not to run the ad citing his paper is read by families and children and the content is not appropriate for them, even though every statistic quoted here is the truth. Let the people of the Snoqualmie Valley decide if they will allow the truth to be suppressed. If anyone is interested in picking up this ad and running it, the advertising dollars are available for you.
Pastor Hutcherson

Text of ad:

The National Day of Silence, sponsored by GLSEN is upon us again. According to GLSEN’S website, “On the National Day of Silence hundreds of thousands of students nationwide take a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in their schools.” In other words, the purpose of the day is to stand in solidarity with homosexual victims.

The illusion that the homosexual lifestyle is a normal way of living has been successfully propagated by promoting a "victim" image for homosexual persons, and by the pseudo-science alleging a ‘gay’ gene. The following evidence does show that homosexual persons are indeed victims—but overwhelmingly of their own behavior, not that of others:

*Homosexuals account for 60% of all syphilis cases and 17% of all hospital admissions in the United States.
*25-33% of homosexuals and lesbians are alcoholics
*30,000 sexually abused children in Los Angeles were victims of homosexuals
*50% of suicides can be attributed to homosexuals; homosexuals are 25 times more likely to commit suicide than the average person
*The median age of death of homosexuals is 42 (only 9% live past age 65)
*The median age of death of lesbians is 45 (only 24% live past age 65)
*43% of homosexuals admit to 500 or more partners in a lifetime and 28% admit to 1,000 or more in a lifetime

As parents and school board members, why are we excited about promoting this lifestyle? If any other lifestyle produced these statistics, would we be having a day to celebrate it?

History buffs will recognize Hutcherson's "verifiable statistics" from the pre-history of homophobia. I didn't think we'd ever see their likes again, in our post-Ellen era. But never underestimate the Hutch.