Conservative Bullies: 6 Ways the Christian Right Picks on People

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http://www.alternet.org/belief/conservative-bullies-6-ways-christian-right-picks-people



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1) Louisiana teacher encourages students to bully Buddhist student. The ACLU is suing the Sabine Parish School Board because of one teacher’s inexplicable alleged campaign to harass and abuse one of her students for his Buddhist beliefs. It isn’t just that the teacher thought a public school classroom was an ideal place to promote her interpretation of Christianity, though that would be reason enough to sue. The teacher reportedly agreed with a classmate who called the Buddhist student “stupid” for not believing in God and encouraged the students to laugh at him. She also reportedly called Buddhism stupid, and gave students tests where the “right” answer was to affirm Christian dogma.

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2) Routinely denouncing attempts to prevent anti-gay bullying in schools. If anyone hoped that Christian conservatives who disapprove of gay rights could find it in their hearts to, at bare minimum, allow LGBT-identified kids to get an education without being harangued under the guise of religion, sorry to dash your hopes. Christian right organization Focus on the Family is happy to help fight back against bullies, unless, of course, the target is gay. Then all of a sudden, Focus on the Family sees the bully as the victim, and attempts to stop him from gay-bashing are nothing but an attempt to “censor or marginalize students and parents with differing viewpoints.”

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3) Demanding that schools make a humiliating spectacle out of transgender kids. One simple way to reduce bullying of transgender kids in school is to let them live as the gender they identify with and not make a big fuss out of it that draws the attention of bullies. When California passed a law giving transgender students exactly this right, Christian conservatives went nuts.

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4) Fighting so that women can’t even go into abortion clinics without being bullied all the way into the door. The abortion buffer zone dispute that went in front of the Supreme Court is not, as proponents say, about free speech. No one is denying the right of anti-choicers to protest clinics or make themselves available to patients who want to speak to them. In fact, no one is saying they can’t inflict themselves on patients by yelling at them or waving signs at them. The only question is whether or not patients are entitled to 7 whole seconds of walking where they are free of being directly bullied by anti-choicers who want to get in their face to yell invective.