FoF Thinks This Is A Good Thing

A follow-up to this post on Candy Cushman, "education analyst" (whatever the hell that is) for Focus on the Family and her "bullying is good" tour.  Just a few highlights of the week:

Yet another teen suicide in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota, bringing their total for the past year to five.  Yes, Five.  The school district's response?

"It's very difficult. We have a community that has widely varying opinions, and so to respect all families, as the policy says, we ask teachers to remain neutral," said District Spokeswoman Mary Olson.

Here's an example of the school district's "neutrality":

Two Anoka-Hennepin School District teachers were accused last year of tag-teaming a student whom they harassed, insinuating that he was gay and embarrassing him in front of his classmates. The student, who was not gay, eventually transferred to another district and brought suit against Anoka-Hennepin. The district settled with him for $25,000. The teachers in the case were placed on leave, and remain on leave currently, the WCCO report said.

This is from a very good, thorough article at Edge.  (Which covers most of what's in this post, but I only found it as I was writing.)

Someone's going to have to explain to me how respecting all families means letting some families' children be driven to suicide.

Another teen suicide, in Indiana this time.

In a heartbreaking irony of circumstance, 15-year-old Billy Lucas killed himself during National Suicide Prevention Week. Billy was the victim of merciless bullying. While he never self-identified as gay, he was cruelly harassed for being different, and many of the taunts accused him of being gay. Last Thursday, a student pulled a chair out from under Billy and told him to go home and kill himself. And Billy did, hanging himself in the family barn.

The principal comes up with the astonishgly novel "blame the victim" defense:

This time the ‘I Don’t Give A Damn Award’ goes to Principal Phil Chapple, who had no idea that Lucas was being bullied. Nope, no clue.
But he did say this:

“Sometimes he created that atmosphere around him,” Chappel said. “Kind of like a little tornado because he went around doing things that made dust fly, I guess.”

So Chappel saw dust fly, but never noticed that kids were threatening Billy every day. Un-huh. And he admits that his problems were because “people found out who he was.”


And according to GLSEN, things aren't getting much better:

The 2009 survey of 7,261 middle and high school students found that at school nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment at school in the past year and nearly two-thirds felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation. Nearly a third of LGBT students skipped at least one day of school in the past month because of safety concerns.

An analysis of National School Climate Survey data over 10 years showed that since 1999 there has been a decreasing trend in the frequency of hearing homophobic remarks; however, LGBT students' experiences with more severe forms of bullying and harassment have remained relatively constant.

So I guess Candy Cushman and her paymasters at FoF can rest assured that they are successful in doing God's work by helping to drive vulnerable teenagers to their deaths.

Did I mention how much these people disgust me?

There will be more on this, but not until I gather my thoughts. News like this, in light of the smug self-satisfaction of creeps like Cushman and her bosses, really pisses me off.