Let's throw the Christians under the bus

First off, what is it with that expression? Is everyone else using it as much as the people I'm around are? What's funny is that every single time I hear it I get an image of the scene at the end of Mean Girls where that one girl gets run over by a bus.

Anyway.

So we were in RA bootcamp a couple weeks ago and there's one particular event that I keep thinking about so I thought I'd blog about it.

We had a couple days of simulations where the old RAs acted out situations and the new RAs had to handle it. It was actually a lot more open-ended and realistic than I thought it would be (although I struggled with the fact that the actors were actors so I couldn't tap into their emotions as much, especially when I knew the actor and that they would never get themselves into that situation. But logistically getting a feel of the flow of situation dynamics and how to handle it was really good).

Anyway.

One of the simulations was a roomate coming out of the closet. Before we walked into the room to start the simulation, we would always prep as a group a little before going in, they would give us about as much information as we would have as RAs, so that the person heading it up would be prepared, and the rest of us observing (we rotated) wouldn't be clueless while watching.

We had some questions about what angle to take on approaching this, with respect to our role as an RA, and our leader made it very clear that, as in ANY case, we are primarily faciliators invested in enabling our residents to have a healthy living environment. With facilitating and enabling comes a sort of neutrality, we're open, we listen, we are flexible on how much we share and step in, but ultimately our goal is to help the residents live the life they chose to live, and to live it healthily and happily.

Neutrality....live their life......"so we can't have any opinion on if they should be gay or not?" asked one of the girls. Uh. No. The leader made if clear that anything along those lines would get you out of a job faster than you can say fire me. "But what if we don't support gays? We can't facilitate them being not gay?" was the girls response. Again: uh. no. definitely not.

I think she took it kind of personally. She rolled her eyes and sighed and said, "well let's just throw the Christians under the bus."

Hm.

In a way, I got where she was coming from, I didn't relate to her personal opinion, but given places in life I've been in the past I could relate to her feeling like she had to support the opinions of an organization that didn't align with her own and she felt jipped.

The thing is. It's not a zero sum game. DHRE wasn't saying "we are pro gay and you are not allowed to not be pro gay, so Christians, keep your opinions to yourselves." DRHE is saying that we are a neutral third party that allows our residents to decide and chose for themselves. If a student is struggling with homosexuality and they themselves do not support homosexulaity, we are there to help them access the resources and support they need to deal with it in the way that they want to. If a student is homosexual and embraces that, we're there to faciliate that aspects of life, theirs and otherwise, that are effected by that choice.

It's not that you can't have your own opinions, its just beyond your role as an RA to impose those opinions on others. Granted, maybe not speaking up about what you believe is against your principles, which is where it could get sticky.

Anyway. I thought her reaction was interesting.