Equal Rights For Bullies: Religious Right Comes To The Defense Of ‘Faith-Based’ Harassment

[Adsos Letter]

Aug 31, 2012 by Rob Boston in Wall of Separation

If you’re the parent of young or teenaged kids, you’re probably concerned about bullying. It’s one of those unpleasant facts of life that just about everyone who has children must eventually confront.

Since children spend much of their time in school, those institutions are the focal point for anti-bullying efforts. Thankfully, the national conversation over this issue has become a lot more serious in recent years, and many schools have adopted anti-bullying policies.

This has alarmed the Religious Right. Groups like Focus on the Family (FOF) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) are worried that fundamentalist Christian young people in public schools won’t be able to properly harass gays, atheists and non-Christians if anti-bullying policies spread. So they’ve more or less formed a pro-bullying caucus designed to shoot down as many of the policies as possible.

A new FOF-ADF salvo takes the form of a document called the “Anti-Bullying Policy Yardstick,” which purports to help public school officials formulate policies that respect the rights of Christian students. In reality, FOF and the ADF are seeking to gut anti-bullying policies by making them utterly ineffective.

http://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/equal-rights-for-bullies-religious-right-comes-to-the-defense-of-faith

Some days it almost isn't worth chewing through the restraints, as they say...

[niyad]

1. and to think I almost took fungus (aka fof) off speed dial.

[Viva_Daddy]

2. "Bullies of a feather flock together."

[cbayer]

3. This is sickening and would be an excellent place for FFRF or another organization to step in.

[Scuba]

4. Tell 'em we'll think about it as soon as they quit whining about the "war on Christmas".

[awoke_in_2003]

11. Are you prepared...

for this years battle?

[Tikki]

5. If you don't believe that this article has some real truth...then you haven't been paying attention.

This kind of instruction is drilled into the brains of many little children and if they
don't harass some other child then they feel like a failure in the eyes of their parents or
Church members.
This has been going on for a long time but now they are up against a law or two.

Please talk to your young children about this..my mother taught me to respond
to these little zealots in a way that put me back in control.


Tikki

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Exemption for protected "sincere religious" bullying.

The Religious Right are not religious, really. They are Dominionists. Their way only.

It attempts to carve out an exemption for protected “religious” bullying. In several states, Religious Right groups have attempted to exempt bullying and verbal harassment based on sincere religious beliefs. In other words, a fundamentalist Christian kid can harass a gay student as much as he wants as along as he sincerely believes what he is saying.

It seeks to gut reporting requirements.

It advises school officials to ignore what kids do after hours or online.

It tells schools they have no right to educate bullies about why their behavior is wrong.

It warns schools to avoid anti-bullying materials produced by “homosexual activist groups.”

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Punish, no. Be involved, teach to it, be aware of it, consider it, yes. RW is an orthogonal problem

[LARED]

7. Actual document is at link

http://media.citizenlink.com/truetolerance/AntiBullyingPolicyYardstick.pdf

[zbdent]

8. To think ... I bullied that writer ...

once, and it was in college. Not really ...

Actually, we're fairly good friends.

[freshwest]

9. 'Who would Jesus bully?' These people are hopeless.

[catbyte]

10. A similar proposal was pushed in MI. Fortunately it failed thanks to public

outcry and outrage even from Republicans. The politicians backed down.

[Iliyah]

12. Until the tables are turned on them and they will loudly

cry VICTIM!

[Mariana]

18. They don't need any tables turned.

They're already crying victim. In their minds, they're being persecuted if they aren't explicitly permitted by law to harass others.

[Smilo]

14. Anti bullying groups say character counts

....... we all know the fundamentalists have absolutely no character.

Here is a great quote.........

“1. Bullying is not okay. Period.

2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.

3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.”
― Jim C. Hines

[Adsos Letter]

17. Bullshit.

[ck4829]

20. Special rights for bullies.