Bullying Is So Gay.
Or so the radical Right would have you believe. Specifically, “Focus On The Family” and the “American Family Association” would like you to think that part of the gay agenda, in addition to marriage equality (or, “homosexual marriage,” as the hate-mongers like to call it,) is instituting anti-bullying policies in schools. And they are outraged because they “think” that LGBT advocacy groups are now the schoolyard bully.
“Focus On The Family” and the “American Family Association” exist to inject their particular breed of religious bigotry and hate into the American mainstream. Focus On The Family’s latest endeavor, a website called “True Tolerance,” claims to offer “New Resources on Bullying Issues,” yet right up front asks, “Concerned about homosexual advocacy in your child’s school?”
Evidently, “New Resources on Bullying Issues” means, “Here’s how to help your kids bully other kids and get away with it.”
Now, I don’t know any parent who woke up today and said, “Gosh, I wonder if the reason Johnny can’t read is because of homosexual advocacy?” Do you? When did “homosexual advocacy” become a problem in our schools? I think hate and hate-mongering is the problem, don’t you?
Of course “True Tolerance,” offers “tips on communicating with your school officials.” Because I’m sure there are a ton of principals who — amidst budget cuts, a renewed focus on education (thanks to the Obama administration) and a brand new school year — are dying to hear from parents who just woke up and imagined a “homosexual agenda” that is creeping into their children’s classrooms.
Talk about creating fear and hysteria where none should exist.
What Focus on the Family should be concerned about is tolerance of bullies, instead of lying to parents by asking, “Why is one-sided promotion of homosexuality happening in your child’s school?”
Take this little tidbit from FOF’s “True Tolerance” agenda of hate:
“Our nation’s K-12 public schools are coming under increasing amounts of political pressure from national homosexual-advocacy groups. This pressure often comes in the form of demands to create a “safe environment†for gay and lesbian students. Schools are told that if they do not ban “homophobic†and “anti- LGBT†(lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) messages—as well as include positive statements about homosexuality in their policies, curriculum, books and during special events like the Day of Silence—they will face legal liability.”
The obvious question is this: Does FOF want more children to be bullied for possibly being different? Does FOF want more children who are merely perceived as gay, or lesbian, or just a little less “stereotypical,” to be beaten, or killed in school, or to come home and commit suicide?
Here’s a reminder for FOF, via The Trevor Project:
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 24-year-olds, accounting for over 12% of deaths in this age group; only accidents and homicide occur more frequently.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death on college campuses.
For every completed suicide by a young person, it is estimated that 100 to 200 attempts are made.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.
More than 1/3 of LGB youth report having made a suicide attempt.
Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives and one quarter report having made a suicide attempt.
Questioning youth who are less certain of their sexual orientation report even higher levels of substance abuse and depressed thoughts than their heterosexual or openly LGBT-identified peers.
LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are more than 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide than LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection.
Focus on the Family, by creating “True Tolerance,” — a disgustingly bigoted idea, that “true tolerance” is allowing bullying, which leads to increased child deaths — is saying “Bullying is A- OK!”
Blogger Joe.My.God. quotes the “True Tolerance” site, which says, “The emphasis should be on the wrong actions of the bully — not on the bully’s perceived thoughts or motivations.” Then he says, “They should ask Carl Walker-Hoover‘s mother what she thinks about that.”
Michael A. Jones at Change.org asks a related question in, “Why Is the Anoka-Hennepin School Board Doing Nothing About LGBT Suicide?”
He writes,
“[T]hree gay students in the span of one year who have taken their lives, all the while the school district has done nothing to open discussions about LGBT bullying or creating safe spaces for LGBT students in Anoka-Hennepin schools.
“Why would the school district do nothing amidst three suicides by LGBT youth? Because they’re worried about offending some socially conservative religious leaders in the area, who want to keep any mention of homosexuality, even if it relates to anti-bullying, verboten on high school campuses.”
Pam’s House Blend examines another facet of this latest right-wing religious hate-mongering. In “AFA Highlights/Recycles FOTF Campaign Against Perceived Gay Public School Agenda,” Autumn Sandeen dissects an American Family Association/OneNewsNow piece (of garbage) titled, “Combating Homosexual Promotion In Schools.”
Like I said, I don’t know any parent who woke up today and said, “Gosh, I wonder if the reason Johnny can’t read is because of homosexual advocacy?” Or, “homosexual promotion,” (whatever that is!) for that matter.
Karoli at Crooks And Liars, in “A Perfect Example of Focus on the Family’s Evil,” adds this:
“This is what happens when the fires of homophobia are stirred. Children are assassinated in cold blood by classmates, threatened by the sexuality and the messages they get from organizations like Focus on the Family. When those fires are stoked up too high, 14-year old boys take guns to school, walk up to classmates, and put two bullets in the back of their heads.
“Tell me again. Who is the bully here?”
I don’t care your political or religious affiliation. If you think it’s OK to bully a child, if you think it’s OK for other children to bully kids, there is something wrong with you.
(Remember, “Anti-Gay Bullying Leads To Suicide, Murder, Hate Crimes, Violence.“)
As I wrote last year, “I’ve written about child suicides here, here, and here. Half of all school bullying is anti-gay, and ‘schools are ignoring it.’ It’s a national emergency, and not enough is being done.”
Focus on the Family is the icon of the Religious Right.
When will they ever learn?
When will we stop them from teaching hate and putting our children in danger?
(image)
Enjoy this piece?
… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.
NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.
Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.
 |
Reacting to a report that Donald Trump has been quizzing his attorneys about what type of prison he likely will be sent to, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner stated that is not only an indication that he knows he’s going to be convicted but also an admission of guilt.
Speaking with MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart, the attorney was asked about a recent Rolling Stone report about Trump’s prison panic.
As Rolling Stone reported, Trump asked if he’s “be sent to a ‘club fed’ style prison — a place that’s relatively comfortable, as far these things go — or a ‘bad’ prison? Would he serve out a sentence in a plush home confinement? Would government officials try to strip him of his lifetime Secret Service protections? What would they make him wear, if his enemies actually did ever get him in a cell — an unprecedented set of consequences for a former leader of the free world.”
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
According to the attorney, Trump is revealing himself by asking for so many details.
“What does this tell you about Trump’s mindset?” host Capehart asked.
“It tells me he is scared to death” Kirschner quickly answered. “It tells me he has overwhelming consciousness of guilt because he knows what he did wrong and he knows he is about to be held accountable for his crimes. So it is not surprising that he is obsessing.”
“If he was confident that he would be completely exonerated, would he have to obsess about what his future time in prison might look like?” he suggested. “I think the last refuge for Donald Trump can be seen in a recent post where he urged the Republicans to defund essentially the prosecutions against him. which, to this prosecutor, Jonathan, smells a lot like an attempt to obstruct justice.”
Watch below or at the link.
Image via Shutterstock
A federal judge in Texas known for a ruling that attempted to ban a widely-used abortion drug is citing an extremist anti-LGBTQ group in his ruling allowing a ban on drag shows to stay in place.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former attorney for an anti-LGBTQ conservative Christian legal organization, and a member of the Federalist Society, in his 26-page ruling dated Thursday cited the “About” page of Gays Against Groomers to claim, “it’s unclear how drag shows unmistakably communicate advocacy for LGBT rights.”
Judge Kacsmaryk, appointed by Donald Trump twice before finally assuming office in 2019, suggests the First Amendment does not provide for freedom of expression for drag shows, calls drag “sexualized conduct,” and says it is “more regulable” because “children are in the audience.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern adds, “Kacsmaryk’s conclusion that drag is probably NOT protected by the First Amendment conflicts with decisions from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Montana which held that drag is constitutionally protected expression. It also bristles with undisguised hostility toward LGBTQ people.”
Calling the judge “a proud Christian nationalist who flatly refuses to apply binding Supreme Court precedent when it conflicts with his extremist far-right beliefs,” Stern at Slate writes that Kacsmaryk ruled drag “may be outlawed to protect ‘the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.’ In short, he concluded that drag fails to convey a message, while explaining all the reasons why he’s offended by the message it conveys.”
Stern does not let Kacsmaryk off the hook there.
“From almost any other judge, the ruling in Spectrum WT v. Wendler would be a shocking rejection of basic free speech principles; from Kacsmaryk, it’s par for the course. This is, after all, the judge who sought to ban medication abortion nationwide, restricted minors’ access to birth control, seize control over border policy to exclude asylum-seekers, and flouted recent precedent protecting LGBTQ+ equality,” Stern says.
“He is also poised to bankrupt Planned Parenthood by compelling them to pay a $1.8 billion penalty on truly ludicrous grounds. And he is not the only Trump-appointed judge substituting his reactionary beliefs for legal analysis. We have reached a point where these lawless decisions are not only predictable but inevitable, and they show no sign of stopping: Their authors are still just settling into a decadeslong service in the federal judiciary.”
West Texas A&M University President Walter V. Wendler penned the letter that sparked the lawsuit.
Titled, “A Harmless Drag Show? No Such Thing,” Wendler wrote: “I believe every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, a person of dignity. Being created in God’s image is the basis of Natural Law. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, prisoners of the culture of their time as are we, declared the Creator’s origin as the foundational fiber in the fabric of our nation as they breathed life into it. Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not.”
Journalist Chris Geidner concludes, “It’s an extremely biased ruling by a judge who has established that he does not care about being overturned — even by the most conservative appeals court in the nation.”
U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL). largely seen as pushing Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s Republican-majority House of Representatives toward shutting down the federal government, is praising and promoting remarks made by a freshman GOP lawmaker that appear to suggest the use of violence. U.S. Rep. Eli Crane‘s comments, posted Friday (below), call for change “through force,” remarks echoing Congressman Gaetz’s recent comments which were denounced by an expert on authoritarianism as fascistic.
“The only way we’re going to see meaningful change in this town is through force,” wrote Congressman Crane, Republican of Arizona atop a three-minute video in which he frames what is now an almost guaranteed government shutdown as a “spending fight.” In his video he says, “the only way you’re gonna get any change in this town is through force.” Gaetz in August had said, “we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.”
Congressman Crane is a former Navy SEAL. He has promoted the false “Big Lie” conspiracy theory that there was massive fraud in the election President Joe Biden won, and called “on the state legislature to decertify the 2020 election.” He is one of six House Republicans who voted against McCarthy’s speakership all 15 times in January.
“Congressman Eli Crane is a fountainhead of political courage,” said Rep. Gaetz Friday afternoon. “He holds the line.”
Crane recently came under fire for calling Black people “colored,” during debate on his legislation that would force the U.S. Armed Forces to not use any diversity requirements in its hiring practices.
Just days before he won his House seat last year, The Washington Post reported Crane had urged an “audience to look up an antisemitic sermon at a recent campaign stop.”
“Crane said that he was motivated to run because of ‘radical ideologies that are destroying this country’ and that he was most concerned about ‘Cultural Marxism,’ which the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as an antisemitic baseless claim gaining traction on the American right.”
“He encouraged the audience to watch a speech by a right-wing pastor who blamed cultural change on a group of German Jewish philosophers and condemned Barack Obama for having a ‘homosexual agenda.'”
“If we don’t wake up,” Crane said, according to the Post, “if we don’t study what they’re doing, and if we don’t put people in influential positions that understand what this war is all about, what they’re trying to do and have and have the courage to call it out, we’re going to lose this country.”
In August, while standing next to Donald Trump at a campaign rally, Congressman Gaetz said, “Mr. President, I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country. They are opening our borders. They are weaponizing our federal law enforcement against patriotic Americans who love this nation as we should.”
“But we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C. And so to all my friends here in Iowa, when you see them come for this man, know that they are coming for our movement and they are coming for all of us.”
At the time, Raw Story reported, “historian and author Ruth Ben-Ghiat called Gaetz comments alarming.”
READ MORE: Pete Buttigieg Just Testified Before Congress. It Did Not Go Well for Republicans.
“What he is saying is that they are not going to have change through elections or through legislation or through reform. They are going to have change through violence,” she warned.
“And that’s how fascists talk,” Ben-Ghiat added. “So, even if Trump is out of the picture, these are people who have adopted methods very familiar to me as a historian of fascism, that violence and corruption and lying that’s what the party is today.”
Image via Shutterstock
‘Scared to Death’: Trump’s Prison Panic Admission Means He Knows He’s Doomed Says Legal Expert
‘Vulgar and Lewd’: Trump Judge Cites Extremist Group to Allow Drag Show Ban
Gaetz Praises GOP Congressman Who Echoes His Call for Change ‘Through Force’
‘See How Easy That Is to Say?’: GOP Mocked for ‘Weaponization’ of DOJ Claims as Democratic Senator Gets Indicted
‘Corruption of the Highest Order’: Experts ‘Sickened’ at ‘Definitely Bought’ Clarence Thomas and His ‘Pay to Play’ Lifestyle
News3 days agoPete Buttigieg Just Testified Before Congress. It Did Not Go Well for Republicans.
News2 days ago‘Corruption of the Highest Order’: Experts ‘Sickened’ at ‘Definitely Bought’ Clarence Thomas and His ‘Pay to Play’ Lifestyle
COMMENTARY3 days ago‘Good Riddance’: Experts Blame Rupert Murdoch for ‘Intellectual and Moral Decay’ of America, Issue Warning on Future
News3 days ago‘Sexy’: Comer Obtains Unredacted Emails to VP Biden Revealing Women ‘Privately Mused’ They Found Him Attractive
News3 days ago‘Just Want to Burn the Whole Place Down’: McCarthy Rails Against House Republicans as GOP Conference Explodes in Chaos
COMMENTARY3 days ago‘Total Breakdown’: House Sends Members Home – Experts Warn ‘Republicans Can’t Govern’ And Have No ‘Working Majority’
News3 days ago‘We’re Not There Yet’: House Republican Hasn’t Seen Any Evidence to ‘Get Anywhere Near Impeachment’
News2 days ago‘Total Nonsense’: Joe Scarborough Pours Cold Water on Panic Over Kamala Harris in 2024