Bullying and The Christianist Right

I promised a follow-up to my posts on "Contemptible People" and "FoF Thinks This Is A Good Thing".

Here's Candy Cushman, of Focus on the Family, along with Eliza Byer of GSLEN, and Rosalind Wiseman, who works on bullying issues across the country.



Cushman gets creamed -- you'll notice she never actually answers any points brought up by Byer or Wiseman. She just keeps repeating herself until she finally brings up the "kids being taught homosexuality in kindergarten" mantra, a sure sign of desperation on the right.

But think about what she's saying here: it doesn't matter why kids are being bullied. Even Cooper's disbelief is obvious on this one. And the rebuttals ring true: if you can't discuss why kids are being bullied, how easy is it to talk to someone about it? You have nothing to say: "They're pickin' on me!" "Stop picking on him." Problem solved -- at least, according to Focus on the Family. And of course, the causes go unexamined and unresolved, but I suspect that's part of the strategy. It's instructive to note that in their eyes, "gay" outweighs "children" every time. This is the reasoning behind my comment that Focus on the Family believe kids should be protected from bullying, except it's OK if they're gay. The other leg of that statement is her whole thing about "politicizing" the issue. Can you say "projection"? "Displacement" will do just about as well. If anyone has politicized school bullying, it's been FoF and the Christianist right because they seem to think that when a gay kid commits suicide, that's a good thing. (And no, I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion, given how much they've fought against including sexual orientation in anti-bullying programs and hate crimes laws.)

Oh, and Cushman's remark that 30% of children report being bullied. Time for a reality check: for GLBT students, it's nearly 90%. I would think that even someone as intellectually stunted as Cushman would see that and maybe, just maybe, think we have a special problem there.

This costs. The cost is just too damned much. I noted a couple of suicides of high-school students when I originally posted on this subject. The one that's gotten the most follow-up is Billy Lucas', in Greensburg, Indiana. Box Turtle Bulletin has been doing major follow-up on this one. This horrible report is the most recent. Jim Burroway, quoting from this story:

Homophobic hate messages were left Thursday on a memorial page set up for Billy Lucas, a Greensburg High School student who killed himself last week after being mercilessly bullied, friends said. Numerous images were uploaded to a Facebook group, giving visitors a taste of the kind of hate Lucas endured, friends said.

The messages chided the teen about defending himself and made attacks on his presumed sexuality, 6News' Joanna Massee reported.

This is the aftermath of the "solution" to bullying that Cushman and FoF are peddling. Billy Lucas didn't seem to have anyone to go to, even though the school had an anti-bullying policy in place.

When looking at this whole thing -- Cushman blindly reiterating her talking points and never even acknowledging other's points in rebuttal, the insistence that talking about gay people is completely out of line, the total disregard of the real human cost of what they are proposing -- I realize what it is that bothers me the most: it's the complete lack of anything even remotely resembling compassion or empathy, or even simple humanity, in their position.

A good parallel, although it's not about bullying, is this clip of Mike Huckabee talking about health care, particularly the ban on refusing insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Same mindset, same tactics, different topic.



Do you begin to see why I despise these people?

Update: In support of my contention that the Christianist right is lacking humanity, see this post at Politics Plus.