Noticing Two Guys Named Dakota

When I consider names popular in this still fledgling century, I’m reminded lots of things have changed from the days of my youth. Most of my adolescent peers? They went by John, Bob, Mike, Mary, Sally - you know, standard, American-type fare. Yet, just recently making the headlines are two young men who answer to "Dakota" - a term for a pair of our states, I know; but one I don't think applied much to human beings until the last few years.

This creatively-named pair also, conversely, confirms something that hasn't changed in the new millennia: the United States remains capable of producing citizens of noteworthy courage.

U.S. Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer is the Kentucky-born, Medal of Honor recipient recently awarded that citation for suicidally charging into an Afghan shooting gallery to save fellow soldiers. Meyer's intrepid actions - in September 2009 in the village of Ganjgal, the then twenty-one year old corporal threw himself five times into the "kill zone" - rescued thirty-six Afghan and American fighters.

It's the kind of silver-screen plot material which makes Hollywood barons' hearts go thumpity-thump. Ridley Scott, call your office!

“The story of what Dakota did ... will be told for generations,“ announced President Obama at a September 15 ceremony. "“Dakota is the kind of guy who gets the job done.”

In our fraught age -- political controversy , economic crisis, brewing security threats, pop cultural putrescence -- patriotic, self-sacrificing individuals like Sgt. Meyer assure us America is still up to hero-making,

Less sensational, certainly, and less front-page-grabbing but admirable nonetheless, are the actions of another Dakota; this one Fort Worth, TX high-schooler Dakota Ary. In the early weeks of this year's term, the freshman was suspended from his Western Hills High School for uttering an opinion the school's prickly administration deemed unacceptable -- but which our Founders, incontestably, would have ranked Constitutionally-protected speech.

When the topic of homosexuality arose in Ary's Geman language class, another student asked what Germans thought about homosexuality in relation to religion. Apparently, a conversation ensued concerning Christianity.

"I'm a Christian and, to me, being homosexual is wrong," Ary volunteered to a classmate.

Reportedly, when German language instructor Kristopher Franks overheard Ary’s comment the fourteen year old was written up and sent to the principal’s office. Ary's comment was out of context, according to the discipline referral form, even though the lesson for the day addressed religious beliefs. Remarkably, Franks charged Ary with "possible bullying" and said, "It is wrong to make such a statement in public school."

“Dakota wasn't disrupting class. He wasn't bullying or harassing anybody, " says the teen's mom, Holly Pope. "He was just stating his personal opinion on a topic somebody else brought up and in a civil and respectful manner."

Meanwhile, the miffed faculty member reportedly had displayed a picture of two men kissing on a "World Wall" and avouched
before his class that homosexuality's growing prevalence is something to which his young charges must accustom themselves.

Dakota Ary didn't take this series of events lying down, joining forces with Liberty Counsel to demand complete vindication and a full retraction of the penalty. If the school board balked, a lawsuit was in the offing for violation of the teen's First Amendment rights.

Franks has since alleged Ary and other students were, in fact, harassing him for their perception that he is gay. The accusing teacher himself was briefly placed on paid administrative leave pursuant to the incident, then quickly reinstated. (He claims, without elaboration, this had nothing to do with the Ary matter). Meanwhile, Ary's in-school suspension was promptly reversed and the Fort Worth Independent School District has since issued a letter to Liberty Counsel fully vindicating the high school freshman.

This dust-up, recall, comes on the heels of another Liberty Counsel case in which Florida Teacher of the Year Jerry Buell was suspended this summer for comments denouncing New York's legalized homosexual marriage, made outside the school setting on his personal Facebook page . Buell was eventually fully exonerated and reinstated by the Lake County School Board.

Liberty Counsel's Senior Litigation Counsel, Harry Mihet, protests, “The double standard advocated by homosexual activists is mind boggling. Jerry Buell was suspended for opposing same-sex 'marriage' outside of class. This teacher in Texas is actually bullying his students into accepting the homosexual lifestyle inside the class, and yet it is his student, not him, that gets suspended. We will vigorously defend and restore Dakota’s constitutional rights.”

This all highlights another civilizational dynamic that's changed rather starkly in a generation: the regard in which homosexuality (or any of its brow-furrowing permutations) is vocally held. In my high school era? It's shameful that an effeminate boy, masculine girl, or anyone even suspected of homosexual leanings, would predictably be ridiculed cruelly or even physically harassed. That likelihood, thankfully, is markedly diminished in 2011 -- but the trend now has gone the other way.

Nowadays, a kid like Dakota Ary, who merely tenders a religious-based conviction that homosexuality is morally unacceptable, tempts a gauntlet of name-calling ("homophobe", "hater", "bully", "fascist"), societal aversion and banishment, even formal sanction, legal or otherwise. Suddenly, raising a defense of traditional sexuality has become the gutsy option.

Author/leadership-trainer Frank Turek has become another, painful case in point. Several months ago, when a Cisco employee unearthed that Turek had written a book expressing opposition to "same-sex marriage", that company's "director of inclusion and diversity" (seriously!) severed its contract with Turek. Soon after, Bank of America followed obeisantly along, nixing its dealings with him, as well.

Legitimately have some lavender activists, haranguing and persecuting anyone who dares suggest they are anything less than "absolutely fabulous", garnered their current moniker: the Gaystapo. Or, perhaps better, would be the "Rainbowstapo" - first they hijacked that Biblical image of God's covenant with man, then they savagely beat the uncooperative over the head with it. The once-bullied have switched roles and become the bullying. How is society to address that?

Well, America boasts a couple of Dakotas, at least, willing to confront what they recognize as threats to their nation's vitality. These are sharply distinctive threats, no denying, and each young man has settled on appropriately distinctive methods for defying them. But defy they do: Dakota Meyer performing prodigies of physical courage on a literal, far-distant battlefield; Dakota Ary opting for moral courage, mounting a free-speech/freedom of religion challenge in the government-funded classroom. In either case, on display is courageous resistance against forces which would undercut our Constitutional Republic's very foundations. Those rendering that kind of crucial service to some of what is best in our way of life deserve our approbation; whatever their names might be.