As I write this, I look out on the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades from a Starbucks at Snoqualmie Ridge, across a parking lot from the town's library.

It's a peaceful spot, which makes it all the more surprising that it's become a flash point for anti-gay protests of an observance designed to bring attention to school bullying.

I didn't make it over to Mount Si High across town today, but several who did said that Pastor Ken came far short of his goal of getting 1000 of his "Prayer Warriors" to join him for a protest of the Day of Silence at the suburban high school.

But, according to one of the parents who at the school this morning, supporters of students' right to hold the observance gathered together between 100 and 120 people -- mostly parents of students at the school, she said -- who silently lined the entryways of the school this morning to show their quiet solidarity with the students.

Lucinda Hauser said that she and other parents wore rainbow flags, but were silent as they stood in line near the school entrances.

Hauser said she's particularly embarrassed that protests to the student-led observance have come mostly from those who say they are Christian.

[The Seattle Times puts the number at 80, but Hauser pointed out to us that there were parents at both the front and back entrances and said that most early reports on radio were failing to count the parents in back.]

She described herself as a "committed Christian parent" at a news conference held today by GLSEN at Snoqualmie Library. "I see a strong tie between Christian teaching and the Day of Silence," she said, explaining that she reads the words of Jesus in the Bible and finds in them near-universal words of love and acceptance.

GLSEN staged the press conference at the library which is several miles away from Mount Si High to respond to misconceptions about the Day of Silence that have been perpetrated by Redmond preacher Ken Hutcherson, and by a group of anti-gay parents that was organized after Hutcherson was questioned about his own intolerance during a speech he was invited to give at the high school about bigotry and intolerance.

Mark Joslin, a parent with two kids attending Mount Si, said that he was at the press conference to "offer our support from a distance."

He said that he sees Day of Silence as an important lesson. "This is about letting our children find their way in the world."

In a statement released at the press conference, Jane Storrs, one of its participants (who I was too late to hear) explained why Day of Silence is an appropriate observance at a high school:

"For the majority of students, the Day of Silence is a chance to see things from another's perspective and develop tolerance and empathy," Storrs explains in the statement. She's a former nurse and mother of three teenagers, one of whom attends Mount Si.

"As a nurse," she says, "I've seen kids with an alternate sexual orientation or gender identity suffer isolation, depression, and suicide. Spending a day in silence allows students a safe place to consider a different perspective and the challenges faced by a minority group."

The panel also included two ministers along with Hauser, all of whom offered a very different interpretation of their faith than that  which Hutcherson had been shouting through a bullhorn on the grounds of the high school just an hour before.

Hauser told the assembled supporters and reporters at the press conference, "I see  strong similarity between Christian teaching and the Day of Silence," and noted that that's what had caused her to speak out in support of "all of our kids."

She mentioned that she's gotten emails from neighbors and others around the country as a result of speaking publicly in support of the DOS observance at Mount Si. "They say they are praying for me," but she said she worries that too many of them are reading only parts of the Bible -- and not what she considers the right parts. "Jesus preached acceptance and love of all people," she insisted.

Hauser, Joslin and others at the press conference offered thanks to Mount Si Principal Randy Taylor who has weathered three months of controversy mostly generated by Hutcherson and his supporters who object to, well... what they really object to is gay people in general, but their specific objections have been to Mount Si's Gay/Straight Alliance (which Hutcherson insists on calling a "sex club") and to the Day of Silence (which the preacher and his supporters call "indoctrination").

A retired Methodist minister (whose name I can't read beyond the 'Mary Br..' in my dreadful notes) explained that gay issues have often been a subject of debate in her church, but she said that what's always been accepted there is "dialogue" and she insisted that the day's silence in support of gay students is, paradoxically, an important kind of dialogue for students.

She said that she hopes residents of Snoqualmie will learn from this year's controversy. "I hope we can all stay in dialogue," she said.

Each of the Snoqualmie residents who attended the press conference expressed deep embarrassment that their town had become the focus of Hutcherson's intolerance. "This is really a tolerant community," one of them insisted.

I was late getting even to the press conference (which helps explain, but not forgive, my shaky notes since it was packed and I had to write while standing) because I didn't look closely enough at the Google map I'd printed out. I guessed that the library was in the old town of Snoqualmie, but when I went into a great old hardware store there for directions, I was told "they moved it out of here," by a couple of very friendly but what one might call "crusty" clerks who explained. "They put it 'up on the hill' for the rich folks."

That's just a touch of local flavor... the kind of thing that we'd be hearing a lot about if the endless political primaries had happened to hit here at a time and in a form that mattered. But it also may say something about how and why Hutcherson saw the new Snoqualmie as a place likely to respond to his message of intolerance.

As I sat in the Starbucks yesterday in the shiny new Snoqualmie town-like creation, I heard something I'm not accustomed to hearing at any of my neighborhood Starbucks stores: The noise of "rug rats" who were noisier because they were probably bored as their mothers (or other kind of care-takers) were sat, ignoring them, and trying to enjoy their "third place."

The residents who spoke at the press conference insisted that "outsiders" had brought this controversy into "our community," but looking around that library and the sparkling town-like creation it is placed in, it was hard to imagine that this version of Snoqualmie really knows yet what it is as a "community."

The controversy generated by and around Hutcherson will probably help it find out faster than it would have without it.

state_wa, org_glsen, education, mount si