Truth Matters
It’s about time I come clean. Y’all need to know I’m part of the mafia, a professor of Marxist and Gestapo tactics, a failed Christian romance writer, a secularist who indoctrinates students. My friends include other mafia members, profligate spenders of government money, teachers in our school district who groom children, theologians who worship Satan.
This small town I live in, I tell you. It’s filled with low down, dirty, shameful people, colluding to make sure our public education system is inclusive, and that our queer students, and our black students, know they matter, just as they are.
My hometown has made national news in recent months, primarily because a school board majority created regressive policies that forbid school employees from displaying Pride and BLM flags, or any other “quasi-political” signs. The school board’s decision-making reflects a trend occurring nation-wide, where people on the far right get elected to local governments and make policies intended to reify white supremacy and trans- and homophobia, while gutting support structures for students, like mental health resources—or, you know, a small pride flag on a teacher’s door, conveying safety and inclusion.
In Newberg, the community’s deep divisions have been encouraged by a man who fancies himself a journalist, and who has spent the fall and winter writing hit pieces about people in town, most often women, and publishing these so-called exposés through social media sites and on his own web page. I won’t link to his writing, because he doesn’t deserve the traffic. But every article does little but smear the people in this community with half-truths and false inuendo that only serves to further divide an already polarized community.
His brand is defamation, and some people are eating it up. He’s had public shout-outs from our school board president; Free Oregon, an anti-mask, anti-vaxx organization, funded a newspaper he made, delivered to every mailbox in our area. This “special edition” maligned a longstanding member of our community, a former pastor, someone with more grace and integrity than just about anybody else I know.
Perhaps this is what bothers me most: that people in my hometown choose to believe this drivel over the real honest-to-goodness neighbors they’ve known for decades. That people would prefer to have their biases confirmed by a sensationalist rag, rather than take a moment to consider years of contrary evidence in those with whom they’ve worked, and worshipped, and volunteered. That people would assume the worst of others in their community, including the leaders and activists and educators and pastors this “newspaper” has targeted.
Some folks advise just ignoring this writer, hoping he will just go away. I’ve been told not to give him more oxygen by responding to his posts. Fair point, and I’m no longer engaging with him on social media. But he’s not going away, and just this week, he has maligned leaders in our community, claiming they are also part of some cabal intent on stealing government money to fund their leftist projects.
I hate that when people Google Newberg, they will find his garbage. I hate that when people Google my name, they will discover that I’m part of some mafia, a Marxist who shouldn’t be teaching journalism at a Christian school because I’m clearly a godless indoctrinator. (Let the record show, I am not.) I hate that his work might make even one parent think twice about sending their child to my university, or might make one tourist decide that Newberg is not somewhere they hope to visit. I hate that conservatives in our community who could shut this down by denouncing him are complicit in their silence.
But mostly, I hate that our community, like our country, is so deeply divided, and that some would rather believe defamatory rubbish than accept the truth: that we are all worthy of love and inclusion, just as we are.