UPDATE (9:45pm): According to the HRC Ms. Knox also uses Twitter to spew her vitriol. According to their report, “New Jersey has the nation’s toughest anti-bullying law – Viki Knox has proven herself incapable of carrying out the law within her school.” Good point! This woman cannot be trusted to serve her students without bias and in support of the law. She needs to be fired. (To see her two most recent posts click here. She is SO classy.)
ORIGINAL: People are arguing over at the HRC’s Facebook page about the right of New Jersey teacher Viki Knox to spew hateful rhetoric on her own Facebook page.
Her post is quoted in the following excerpt from the HRC’s letter campaign which asks the school officials to properly deal with the situation.
“Homosexuality is a perverted spirit,” according to Union Township, NJ teacher Viki Knox. She said so in a hateful Facebook rant this week about a simple bulletin board in a school hallway meant to recognize LGBT history month.
Knox should be standing up for students – not railing against them. She even compared homosexuality to cancer and at one point broke into an all-caps tirade blasting homosexuality as a choice:
“Why parade your unnatural immoral behaviors before the rest of us? AND YOU ARE WRONG! I/WE DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT ANYTHING, ANYONE. ANY BEHAVIOR OR ANY CHOICES! I DO NOT HAVE TO TOLERATE ANYTHING OTHERS WISH TO DO.”
This kind of hatred should be unacceptable from somebody who is supposed to be a role model to students. Thanks to Garden State Equality who obtained Knox’s comments, we now know the extent of her anti-LGBT rage – and together we’ll make sure school officials in Union Township know we won’t stand for it.
The argument in the Facebook page’s comment section stems from people believing, for and against, Ms. Knox’s right to Freedom of Speech. It is all fine and dandy to hide behind this sentiment, but looking closely at the actual law (as detailed in the Cornell University Law School’s Legal Information Institute) we find the following:
The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government may prohibit some speech that may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence. For more on unprotected and less protected categories of speech see advocacy of illegal action, fighting words, commercial speech and obscenity. The right to free speech includes other mediums of expression that communicate a message. The level of protection speech receives also depends on the forum in which it takes place.
So, the real question is, do Ms. Knox’s words advocate “fighting” and/or “obscenity”? I believe so. In my opinion Ms. Knox posted these comments to incite people who share in her misguided and ignorant beliefs to take action against, what she calls, the “perverted spirit”.
So yes, I signed the letter. I ask you to do the same. Feel free to say what you wish about who you wish, but do not try to instill fear in those you believe are wrong or instigate further bigotry in others.
Tommy Karr 