Religious Right Launches Public Campaign to Defend School Bullying Against LGBT Kids

source http://www.openleft.com/diary/19977/a-new-low-religious-right-launches-public-campaign-to-defend-school-bullying-against-lgbt-kids

From the Department of You Can't Make This Crap Up, we get this story from the Denver Post about the Religious Right's new campaign in support of school bullying: Focus on Family says anti-bullying efforts in schools push gay agenda As kids head back to school, conservative Christian media ministry Focus on the Family perceives a bully on the playground: national gay-advocacy groups. School officials allow these outside groups to introduce policies, curriculum and library books under the guise of diversity, safety or bullying-prevention initiatives, said Focus on the Family education expert Candi Cushman. "We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled," Cushman said. Public schools increasingly convey that homosexuality is normal and should be accepted, Cushman said, while opposing viewpoints by conservative Christians are portrayed as bigotry. While the article goes on to say that Focus on the Family officially "supports bullying prevention," the message is pretty clear: The leadership of the Religious Right believes that kids should have the right to threaten, intimidate, physically harm and/or engage in all the other aspects of bullying - as long as that bullying is motivated by a hatred of LGBT individuals. Indeed, these leaders believe that stopping such bullying against LGBT individuals is a form of persecution - in their words, the anti-bullying efforts "belittle" Christians by daring to "portray" violence against LGBT individuals "as bigotry." The assumptions in this are truly grotesque. First and foremost, we are to assume that it isn't bigotry to want to commit - or, perhaps even to actually commit - such violence against an individual specifically because of their sexual orientation. The further assumption is that to claim it is bigotry is to actually expose oneself as the real bigot - in this case, against Christians. That consequently means we are to assume it is the inalienable right of citizenship to bully people whose sexual orientation we don't like. The Religious Right would have us accept these assumptions without question - as if they are entirely self-evident. The truth, of course, is that they are anything but.

David Sirota :: A New Low: Religious Right Launches Public Campaign to Defend School Bullying Against LGBT Kids

Nondiscrimination should mean nondiscrimination. Preventing bullying should mean preventing bullying - whether or not the bullying is motivated by a hatred for LGBT individuals. And bigotry is bigotry - whether it's directed at people because of race, gender or sexual orientation. Why is this such a serious issue when it comes specifically to the issue of school bullying? Because schools are one of the venues where bigoted persecution against LGBT individuals is most pronounced. Today, about one in three American kids is involved in bullying. Studies have shown that kids who identify as gay or lesbian are up to three times more likely to get bullied than other kids - and about one in four of those gay/lesbian kids report being physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation. The good news is that there are lawmakers like Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) who aren't being cowed by the Religious Right and who are taking the issue seriously by calling for some real reforms. "Right now we have laws that prohibit bullying based on pretty much everything, but not on gender identity and gay and lesbian kids," he said at a recent hearing in which he criticized that discrepancy. But if you listen to the Religious Right, that discrepancy is AOK - and to call for an end to it is "bigotry" and "belittling" of Christians. What we are left with, then, is a good example that illustrates how extreme these fundamentalist forces are. In effectively arguing that it should be the right of a child to inflict violence on another child because of that child's sexual orientation, the Religious Right is showing that it sees "equality," "nondiscrimination" and even "equal protection under the law" as principles that should protect only those demographics that Religious Right theocrats deems worthy of such freedoms. Regardless of which particular political party you belong to, that kind of extremism should disgust anyone who purports to oppose bigotry and claims to take basic constitutional ideals seriously.