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By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) AUG 25 | Millions of school aged children across the United States are now preparing to end their summers and head back to their classrooms, untold thousands of them to face a problem that has reached epidemic proportions, bullying.
Concerns about this pandemic are now being addressed by the Congress of the United States in which both the House and Senate have versions of a bill known as The Safe Schools Improvement Act, the House Bill introduced into the U.S. House by Representative Linda Sanchez, (D-CA) in January, 2009 and the Senate Bill introduced by Senator Robert Casey, (D-PA) recently.
Earlier this summer at a conference in Washington D. C. sponsored by the U. S. Department of Education, hundreds of attendees from across the country, Parents, Educators, and Administrators, gathered to learn methods to cut down on the problem as well as specific ways to address the bullying issue.
Reporter Russ Jones from the Christian American Family News Network wrote in an article on the AFN website, OneNewsNow dot com Monday, August 23rd:
"Finn Laursen, who attended the summit, is executive director of the Christian Educators Association International(CEAI). He says bullying has reached epic proportions and thinks parents should be aware of potential threats that could affect a child's well-being.
"We really encourage the body of Christ to speak out against it and also to really remember what Ephesians 4:29 says -- 'Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment so that it will give grace to those who hear,'" Laursen notes.
He believes that if Christian parents and teachers would instill that scripture into the hearts and minds of their children, it would significantly reduce bullying.
"Bullying very often is physical, but the majority of it is verbal -- and it hurts. It's understandable why words hurt," he recognizes. "We were created in the image of God, and he spoke the very universe into existence. When we speak negative words to other people, it is destructive; it creates destructive things."
Okay, so Laursen acknowledges that bullying is a problem, BUT, when it comes down to the issue of LGBT kids being bullied & needing protection including legislative efforts, Oh, no we can't have that now, because that advances the "homosexual agenda."
Bill Bumpas, another OneNewsNow staff writer reports that Candi Cushman, education analyst with Focus on the Family's CitizenLink, claimed that the Safe Schools Improvement Act, requires most public schools to include special protection for homosexual categories in their local bullying codes. Cushman told Bumpas that this undermines parental rights and takes control away from local schools:
"Once schools are forced to include special categories for things like sexual orientation or gender identity in their policies, that has been used as leverage to get in homosexual-themed curriculum for kids as young as kindergarten [and to introduce] so-called 'diversity training' for high school students and teachers," Cushman explains. "So this just becomes a gateway for homosexuality promotion in the school. "It shouldn't be just catering to a narrow political agenda," the education analyst contends. "We think that schools can provide neutral and strong protection for all kids, no matter who they are -- without sexualizing and politicizing the classroom."
I see, so this is you can't have your cake and eat it too eh Ms. Cushman? Let me spell out the provisions of this legislation:
"The Act would create comprehensive and standardized anti-bullying policies which, for the first time, would include protections on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity as well as other recognized protected classes such as religion and national origin."
So, let me understand this correctly, The Safe Schools Improvement Act or SSIA would call on schools and districts that receive federal funds to adopt anti-bullying policies and codes of conduct that specifically prohibit bullying or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation and perceived or actual gender identity?
Well, I sure don't see any agenda in that save for protecting kids at risk from bullies. Look- The fact is that LGBT kids are more in danger of being harmed that other kids. GLSEN issued a report that outlined the fact that LGBT students face even higher levels of victimization. Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students (86.4%) said they had been harassed in the past year, according to GLSEN's 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students. Additionally, 60.8% said they felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation.
Apparently, LGBT kids are not entitled to any 'special' protection, or for that matter any protection as that would advance this huge vast conspiracy of the homo agenda.
How about we start worrying more about the facts instead of the myths? As far as I am concerned, these so-called Christians are merely hypocrites when it comes down to humanitarian gestures and that, that is disgusting to me.
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... I thought I'd better hurry and pose a response; the problem is, try as I might, somehow or the other I keep failing to get my head around this one.
Am I angered by the hypocrisy of the so-called "New Wave" born again Christians and their politicizing just about everything in sight should it run contrary to their albeit very narrow and especially skewed perspective? Yes.
Am I surprised at their stance? No, not really. We see, and hear, this drivel flowing out of their mouths time and time again; and not just from within the ranks of American society; but too, from Caucasian society at large, and recently, and especially virulently, within non-Caucasian societies the World over; and not always Christian based Theologies either.
Does the issue of bullying disturb me? Damn right it does. Although never a victim of abuse of any kind whatsoever, either gender motivated, or otherwise, I'd have had to have be blind not to see it occurring around me, both as a youth attending school, or an adult in the community at large wherever I've resided. Do I condone this behaviour? Not in this lifetime. Do I intervene? Yes, each and every time; often as not, at great risk to my own personal safety. I do this because it is the right thing to do. It is fair and equitable and just to all involved, and each of us should never turn a blind eye, whether the victim of that bullying be a child or and adult, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, Caucasian or not, able or disabled, frail, inform or healthy. Bullying is bullying. It is abuse. Plain and simple, and no one should ever feel compelled to have to endure abuse from anyone at any time.
It disgusts me that anyone could, or would, ever consider politicizing any measure intended to empower all of us, either as individuals or collectively, to not become victimized by an other's abuse. It troubles and disgusts me even more when this politicizing is done in the name of Christ, or any Deity, in support of their abhorrent behaviour.
The World in general, and America in particular, needs to give themselves a smack upside the head, and take a good look around; Earth is no-longer the sole province and playground of a Christian White peoples, if it ever was.
Diversity Training, embracing the human condition in all its' flavours, with all its' foibles, is an absolutely essential tool in the education and modification of any society which sees itself as the be all and end all of human experience. We here in Canada learned that hard lesson more than 40-years ago, and now in the third generation of societal change, we are just beginning to reap its' benefits. It is a time whose time had come for us then, and it has now definitely arrived for all others; Anerica must embrace it for all it's worth; as must the World at large; and quickly, before we are again plunged into a global quagmire of despair and dysfunction and armed conflict that we might not ever recover from.
How any reasonable, rational, thinking, human being (and by extension any Corporate or otherwise, entity or society) could consider Diversity Training as another politicizing someone else's personal agenda simply astounds me; that a Faith-based Enterprise could, or would, ever consider doing so, or could, or would, think that others are, sickens me.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Tue, 31 August 2010 07:17]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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The Christian Hypocrisy Agenda In The United States 
