According to that "lovely" phony news service, One News Now:
Since Education Secretary Arne Duncan has once again met with a group of LGBT students to hear suggestions for improving school experience, one conservative wonders if a meeting with Christian students is even a possibility.
This latest meeting can be added to the list of about two dozen others Duncan has held with LGBT students since taking office. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (FRC) recognizes that Dncan can meet with whomever he wants -- but offers one query.
"I'm curious whether he would be willing to meet with Christian students in a similar way so that they could relate their experiences of bullying and persecution because they've expressed their faith or their personal moral convictions at school," Sprigg notes.
The gist of Sprigg's comment and the article is that focusing on the bullying of gay students is supposedly unnecessary:
Sprigg points out that studies show the main reason students are bullied is not because of sexual orientation, but because of body image, academic performance and perceived intelligence. So while Duncan is placing the Department of Education's focus on the lesbian, "gay", bisexual and transgender students, Sprigg contends no one is looking out for the students who need the attention.
That link in the article doesn't point to any of the "studies," but another One News Now article featuring a statement from Peter Jon Mitchell of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada Apparently IMFC is a Canadian religious right group.
Mitchell said the following:
A report on state legislation up to April 2011 for the U.S. Department of Education found that 48 pieces of legislation on bullying were passed between 2000 and 2006, with an additional 78 pieces of state legislation passed in the following four years. Many of the laws aim to protect homosexuals, but the study reveals there is little bullying on that basis.
"The primary reason or primary trigger for bullying is body image, followed by academic performance and sort of perceived intelligence," Mitchell reports.
Someone should tell Sprigg that an article talking about a generic report while providing no link to the report is not equal to a legitimate study.
But more than that, I am struck by Sprigg's first statement - "I'm curious whether he (Arne Duncan) would be willing to meet with Christian students in a similar way so that they could relate their experiences of bullying and persecution because they've expressed their faith or their personal moral convictions at school."
That's a good question. An even better question would be why don't Sprigg or FRC get a group of these students together for such a meeting.
My guess is that it won't happen.
The reason is not because the supposed bullying of Christian students isn't happening. That's not the point.
The point is that Sprigg wouldn't be interested in getting such a group together because he only mentioned these students as a way to play Christian students and gay students against one another in the eyes of the public.
Combating the bullying of any students is not what Sprigg and FRC are going for. It's not in any of their goals. To my knowledge, FRC has never pushed for any concrete legislation or made any legitimate suggestions when it comes to combating the bullying of any students.
Keeping down the gay community is all they aim for.
In other words, Sprigg is using Christian students as patsies.
He's not interested in stopping the bullying of Christian students any more than he is interested in stopping the bullying of gay students.
And it's sad because some folks will read Sprigg's comments and think that he makes a good point without realizing that he is exploiting Christian students for yet another game of "stop the queers."
1 comment:
And as is eerily familiar, Sprigg pretends there is no overlap between "Christian students" and "gay students."
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