Monday, May 23, 2011

An anti-bullying initiative NO ONE needs

After constantly complaining about how anti-bullying initiatives cater too much to the lgbt community, members of the religious right have finally come out with their own anti-bullying initiative:

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has submitted a Model Anti-Bullying Policy to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Briefing on Bullying that, unlike others submitted by those pushing a political agenda, is for all students.

ADF believes some activist groups are perverting well-intended policies to promote homosexually-based programs in public schools. The "Welcoming Schools" program from the Human Rights Campaign and the "safe schools" initiatives of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) are two examples.

(ADF)"Many parents don't want their young children taught about issues involving sexuality, but that's oftentimes what these so-called 'anti-bullying' requests require," notes ADF attorney Dale Schowengerdt.

If I was a member of the group ADF submitted their bullying policy to, I would shred it and pretend that it never arrived. The "initiative" is four pages long (counting the introduction letter). The introduction letter spends more time castigating the lgbt community than addressing the problem of bullying. In part it reads:

Efforts to indoctrinate our society into supporting homosexual behavior have been ever increasing over the last several years. Many of these efforts have targeted those most vulnerable and impressionable to this indoctrination-our children.

Schools are being transformed from places of safety and learning to places of unprecedented sexual education. Children as young as kindergarteners are being subjected to books, programs, and teachings designed to undermine traditional notions of sexuality and family.

Bullying has always been a problem within our schools. Many schools have rightly responded to these problems by implementing policies aimed at reducing and/or punishing bullying. These well intentioned policies, however, are now being perverted and used as cloaks for the promotion of homosexually-based programs in our schools.

Examples of these efforts include the "Welcoming Schools" program by the Human Rights Campaign and the "safe schools" initiatives by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Other homosexual behavior advocates are demanding that protections for "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" be inserted into existing anti-bullying policies so that inappropriate, sexually-based materials can be promulgated to our children.

Unfortunately, when presented with demands to adopt anti-bullying laws, policies, and programs that further the demands of the homosexual agenda, many legislators, school board members, and educators are not properly equipped to respond to these demands. In many instances, anti-bullying policies devised by advocates of homosexual behavior were adopted by policymakers where no competing or discerning voice to the contrary was heard. This trend cannot continue.

And the initiative itself is functionary - it has nothing on training or preventative initiatives. Nor does it provide any research in the forms that bullying can take.

All in all, it reads like something parsed by a high school student who discovered his assignment is due in 30 minutes and so subsequently decides to "fake it until he makes it."

Unfortunately "faking it" seems what the Alliance Defense Fund is trying to do. Its initiative has less to do with protecting students and more to do with eliminating any mention of lgbt students in our nation's schools.



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1 comment:

Linnea said...

Well, it's obvious that the religious right doesn't want LGBT students protected in any way. Guess they'd rather have more stories like Jamie Nabozny's. Jamie is a young gay man from Wisconsin. He was the target of name-calling and worse for years in high school, including a beating that put him in the hospital for 4 days. He was lucky: his parents were supportive of him, and his family took the school district to court and won a huge settlement. Anti-bullying curricula MUST address bullying against LGBT students, or they're a waste of time. If the religious right doesn't like it, they can KOA.