{"id":2744,"date":"2012-04-05T16:50:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T20:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/?p=2744"},"modified":"2012-04-05T20:27:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T00:27:19","slug":"the-anti-anti-bullying-efforts-by-us-christian-right-wingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/05\/the-anti-anti-bullying-efforts-by-us-christian-right-wingers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-anti-bullying efforts by US Christian Right-wingers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Call me idealistic, but for some reason I never cease to be amazed at the depths folks will go to.\u00c2\u00a0 Certain Christian groups in our wonderful southern neighbour are actively lobbying AGAINST anti-bullying laws because they want to include terminology that would make it\u00c2\u00a0perfectly ok to bully if the kids were TAUGHT that being gay\/different\/whatever was\u00c2\u00a0wrong:\u00c2\u00a0 &#8220;&#8230;would have exempted bullies who acted out of &#8220;a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m speechless, can&#8217;t really believe this crap.\u00c2\u00a0 So I won&#8217;t even bother writing my own thoughts on this particular topic, but instead I will use quotes from the following links to write this post:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jezebel.com\/5899461\/christians-fight-for-their-childrens-god+given-right-to-bully-gay-kids?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_twitter&amp;utm_source=jezebel_twitter&amp;utm_medium=socialflow\">Christians Fight for Their Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s God-Given Right to Bully Gay Kids<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/story\/154863\/the_bully_backlash%3A_how_the_christian_right_is_attacking_efforts_to_help_kids?page=entire\">The Bully Backlash: How the Christian Right Is Attacking Efforts to Help Kids<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Michigan, lawmakers attempted to insert a provision into an anti-bullying bill that would have allowed bullying only on the grounds that it was being done based on a &#8220;sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 <em>Thankfully it was tossed out after a national outcry.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A number of groups that claim to represent the &#8220;Christian viewpoint&#8221; have come out in vigorous opposition to anti-bullying initiatives, and their opposition has to do with a fundamental question about exactly what we think bullying is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Senate minority leader David Schapira, a sponsor of his Senate Bill 1462, called her a &#8220;legislative terrorist&#8221;. &#8220;Cathi Herrod, an unelected lobbyist (from a Christian right-wing group), killed a bill that would protect all Arizona kids purely because of her intolerance of gay kids.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be sure, the notion that the anti-bullying initiatives are driven by &#8220;the homosexual agenda&#8221; \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a phrase that conjures the vision of gay hordes aiming to seduce children into lives of abomination \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is preposterous. But the sense that anti-bullying initiatives involve teaching children &#8220;acceptance&#8221; of LGBT peers, to use the word of the Concerned Women of America, is not. If you want the school to tell students to stop harassing kids like Jacob Rogers\u00c2\u00a0<em>because they are gay<\/em>, you have to let them know, at some point, that the school thinks it&#8217;s OK to be gay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Is anyone else really tired and depressed right now?<\/p>\n<div id=\"lbOverlay\" style=\"display: none;\">&#8220;I hate to break it to Christian groups, but if your kid&#8217;s straightness is so flimsy that it depends on his ability to punch the kids who can&#8217;t throw a spiral pass in gym class, your kid is probably going to start secretly dating an older man named Bruce or Lance once he gets to college. Rejecting anti-bullying laws is akin to codifying repression and shame. And that&#8217;s a pretty crappy way to live.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div id=\"lbCenter\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"lbBottomContainer\" style=\"display: none;\">Does anyone else feel just tired and shameful for all of humanity, or is that just me?<\/div>\n<div id=\"lbOverlay\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Call me idealistic, but for some reason I never cease to be amazed at the depths folks will go to.\u00c2\u00a0 Certain Christian groups in our wonderful southern neighbour are actively lobbying AGAINST anti-bullying laws because they want to include terminology &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/05\/the-anti-anti-bullying-efforts-by-us-christian-right-wingers\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[349],"class_list":["post-2744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stupidity","tag-sorry-why-do-we-have-religion-again"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piGNU-Ig","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2744"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2749,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions\/2749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}