Barbara Bradley Hagerty wrote a segment on NPR today titled, Religious Undercurrent Ripples In Anti-Gay Bullying. Go check it out; you will recognize her interviewees and she does a nice job of covering several perspectives.
Consider Justin Anderson, who graduated from Blaine High School outside Minneapolis last year. He says his teenage years were a living hell. From sixth grade on, he heard the same taunts.
“People say things like ‘Fags should just disappear so we don’t have to deal with them anymore’ and, ‘Fags are disgusting and sinful,'” he told the Anoka-Hennepin School Board. “And still, there was no one intervening. I began to feel so worthless and ashamed and unloved that I began to think about taking my life.”
Anderson told his story at a public hearing last month — a hearing convened because in the past year, the district has seen a spate of student suicides. Four of those suicides have been linked to anti-gay bullying.
The Minnesota Family Council and Tony Perkins of the Family Reasearch Council provide their viewpoint, and I take a different view in the segment. You also hear from Sirdeaner Walker, who lost her son, Carl to bullying last year. She is a Christian who has become a board member at GLSEN.
Go check it out…
The Minnesota Family Council agrees that the Christian community needs to become part of the solution by emulating the example of Christ.
MFC called on Christian parents, and all people of goodwill, to encourage their children to stand up to the bullies like Jesus stood up for the woman about to be stoned in John 8:3-11.
Clearly, we can all agree that bullying of GLBT students is wrong while disagreeing on things like anti-bullying curricula.
See Tom Prichard’s article in the Star Tribune about bullying at Anoka-Hennepin schools and “anti-homophobia” curricula.
http://tinyurl.com/22vgqbd
It is interesting the Barb Anderson shared the call for parents to encourage their children to stand up to the bullies, yet Hagerty didn’t report it. Even though her article was about religious undercurrents. It is our opinion that Hagerty had an agenda and pressed Anderson for more controversial remarks. She got what she needed from Perkins.
Chuck Darrell
Minnesota Family Council
Chuck Darrell – Welcome to the conversation. I appreciate your call for Christians to stand up against bullying. I point you to the Golden Rule Pledge where this is operationalized. My question for you relates to what you are concerned about in anti-bullying curricula. Can you help me understand specifically what you oppose? Concrete examples would help. For instance, in school A, this was done or said…
If these peole that are attacting the Gay comunity would get true religion “saved by the grace of God ” they would not be bulling from the society, schools and churches.
This man should be fired the schools are out of hand . All these small comunities
have cover-ups and sweep it under the rug. It is people just like this man that has
who has encourage this bad behaver.
Take a look at your soul, if you want to harm anyone you are liking in your salavation.
Forget not it is God who will do the Judging.
God made everyone of these as he did you. What is your hair color are handsome are you handicap or you born with the X+Y or only Y or X gean. Remember there is no gender untill a period of time after you concieved. I am a proude Mother of my children. God bless them with health and happiness and love we tought them for all people be it not for the grace of God there go we.
If these peole that are attacting the Gay comunity would get true religion “saved by the grace of God ” they would not be bulling from the society, schools and churches.
This man should be fired the schools are out of hand . All these small comunities
have cover-ups and sweep it under the rug. It is people just like this man that has
who has encourage this bad behaver.
Take a look at your soul, if you want to harm anyone you are liking in your salavation.
Forget not it is God who will do the Judging.
God made everyone of these as he did you. What is your hair color are handsome are you handicap or you born with the X+Y or only Y or X gean. Remember there is no gender untill a period of time after you concieved. I am a proude Mother of my children. God bless them with health and happiness and love we tought them for all people be it not for the grace of God there go we.
Yes, Mr. Darrell, thank you so much for deigning to join the “conversation”. And thank you for joining it in such an entertaining manner.
In particular, your assertion that we surely “all agree that bullying of GLBT students is wrong” caused paroxysms of laughter. If the MFC thought that bullying was a moral wrong, then why for its entire existence has it done nothing to combat bullying in the same manner that it combats “the gay agenda” or abortion? For decades, gay kids and non-gay kids in Minnesota have been punched, kicked, scratched, stabbed, hit with blunt objects, thrown down stairs, pushed into lockers, barraged with verbal abuse, humiliated, driven from school and ultimately from life itself. In response, MFC founded some 20 years ago, has done exactly nothing. No statewide ballot initiatives. No public education campaign. No lobbying effort. Nothing.
“Nothing“, not coincidentally, also describes the cumulative legislative and administrative anti-bullying reforms effected by Focus on the Family, every Family Policy Council in every state, the AFA, CWFA, and the FRC since they came into existence. As with MFC, the only time these groups are moved to mention the issue is by way of a brief concession prior to an attack on gays and their anti-bullying proposals.
For but the latest example, I refer you to today‘s 755-word press release “Real Christians Say ‘No’ to Bullying and Homosexual Behavior.” While the main value of this document, when read in full, is to indict real Christians as incomparably cruel, paranoid, and casually defamatory, that is not why I mention it now. I mention it to note that of the 755 words, 5 are directed at bullying. Not even anti-gay bullying; the authors can’t even bring themselves to mention that. No, all bullying violence against hundreds of thousands of children warrants 5 words. You can guess at what is the focus of the other 99% of the press release.
So no, we can’t “all agree that bullying of GLBT students is wrong” because there is nothing in your actions over years and decades that suggests that you do believe that. And even if we were to credit your belated, self-serving denunciations of bullying, the best conclusion in light of all of your statements on the subject is that you view such violent conduct, in and of itself, as a nuisance, and elevate it to a serious moral issue only to the extent that it threatens to bring a discussion of gays into the classroom.
Finally, I found it extraordinarily entertaining to see you invoke the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. When Mary Magdalene faced the imminent threat of death or bodily harm by mob violence, Jesus Christ did not simultaneously denounce the mob and the mob’s victim. He didn’t launch in to a speech, 99 percent focused on attacking Mary. He didn’t speculate that perhaps Mary was not scared of the mob, but despaired of her own depravity. And he didn’t worry that, by defending Mary from death, he might be encouraging the hooker agenda.
He interposed himself between the mob and the victim. At great risk, he protected her. He disbursed the mob. And when the danger had completely passed, and only then, did he say to her “Go and sin no more.” This story isn’t support for your position. It is the best evidence that you have eschewed Christ’s approach and instead follow the idol of your own political goals and policy priorities, which obsess on the supposed sin of the victim rather than the violence done to him.
Please keep at it. Nothing could discredit Christianity more effectively.
@ David…
just goofy.
Yes, Mr. Darrell, thank you so much for deigning to join the “conversation”. And thank you for joining it in such an entertaining manner.
In particular, your assertion that we surely “all agree that bullying of GLBT students is wrong” caused paroxysms of laughter. If the MFC thought that bullying was a moral wrong, then why for its entire existence has it done nothing to combat bullying in the same manner that it combats “the gay agenda” or abortion? For decades, gay kids and non-gay kids in Minnesota have been punched, kicked, scratched, stabbed, hit with blunt objects, thrown down stairs, pushed into lockers, barraged with verbal abuse, humiliated, driven from school and ultimately from life itself. In response, MFC founded some 20 years ago, has done exactly nothing. No statewide ballot initiatives. No public education campaign. No lobbying effort. Nothing.
“Nothing”, not coincidentally, also describes the cumulative legislative and administrative anti-bullying reforms effected by Focus on the Family, every Family Policy Council in every state, the AFA, CWFA, and the FRC since they came into existence. As with MFC, the only time these groups are moved to mention the issue is by way of a brief concession prior to an attack on gays and their anti-bullying proposals.
For but the latest example, I refer you to today’s 755-word press release “Real Christians Say ‘No’ to Bullying and Homosexual Behavior.” While the main value of this document, when read in full, is to indict real Christians as incomparably cruel, paranoid, and casually defamatory, that is not why I mention it now. I mention it to note that of the 755 words, 5 are directed at bullying. Not even anti-gay bullying; the authors can’t even bring themselves to mention that. No, all bullying violence against hundreds of thousands of children warrants 5 words. You can guess at what is the focus of the other 99% of the press release.
So no, we can’t “all agree that bullying of GLBT students is wrong” because there is nothing in your actions over years and decades that suggests that you do believe that. And even if we were to credit your belated, self-serving denunciations of bullying, the best conclusion in light of all of your statements on the subject is that you view such violent conduct, in and of itself, as a nuisance, and elevate it to a serious moral issue only to the extent that it threatens to bring a discussion of gays into the classroom.
Finally, I found it extraordinarily entertaining to see you invoke the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. When Mary Magdalene faced the imminent threat of death or bodily harm by mob violence, Jesus Christ did not simultaneously denounce the mob and the mob’s victim. He didn’t launch in to a speech, 99 percent focused on attacking Mary. He didn’t speculate that perhaps Mary was not scared of the mob, but despaired of her own depravity. And he didn’t worry that, by defending Mary from death, he might be encouraging the hooker agenda.
He interposed himself between the mob and the victim. At great risk, he protected her. He disbursed the mob. And when the danger had completely passed, and only then, did he say to her “Go and sin no more.” This story isn’t support for your position. It is the best evidence that you have eschewed Christ’s approach and instead follow the idol of your own political goals and policy priorities, which obsess on the supposed sin of the victim rather than the violence done to him.
Please keep at it. Nothing could discredit Christianity more effectively.
@ David…
just goofy.
Oh yes, a true christian would be so.
Chuck Darrell – Welcome to the conversation. I appreciate your call for Christians to stand up against bullying. I point you to the Golden Rule Pledge where this is operationalized. My question for you relates to what you are concerned about in anti-bullying curricula. Can you help me understand specifically what you oppose? Concrete examples would help. For instance, in school A, this was done or said…
Oh yes, a true christian would be so.
I heard this earlier today when it aired during All Things Considered. I thought you did very well. However, appearing on NPR as a foil to the FRC and the MFC will only further confirm for American Christians that you are, at best, a backslidden Christian, and at worst a heretic given over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28).
A true Christian would not be publicly defending 13-year old bullying victims on NPR, but instead would be doing everything possible to smear deceased bullied children as self-loathing and abnormal, while also striving mightily to preserve the practices which have proven so effective in culling the population of potential homosexuals.
.
Actually… I think it’s genuine Christianity that comes to the rescue, not the faux variety that dominates discourse in the Culture Wars.
The Minnesota Family Council agrees that the Christian community needs to become part of the solution by emulating the example of Christ.
MFC called on Christian parents, and all people of goodwill, to encourage their children to stand up to the bullies like Jesus stood up for the woman about to be stoned in John 8:3-11.
Clearly, we can all agree that bullying of GLBT students is wrong while disagreeing on things like anti-bullying curricula.
See Tom Prichard’s article in the Star Tribune about bullying at Anoka-Hennepin schools and “anti-homophobia” curricula.
http://tinyurl.com/22vgqbd
It is interesting the Barb Anderson shared the call for parents to encourage their children to stand up to the bullies, yet Hagerty didn’t report it. Even though her article was about religious undercurrents. It is our opinion that Hagerty had an agenda and pressed Anderson for more controversial remarks. She got what she needed from Perkins.
Chuck Darrell
Minnesota Family Council
Science and Reason to the rescue!
🙂
I heard this earlier today when it aired during All Things Considered. I thought you did very well. However, appearing on NPR as a foil to the FRC and the MFC will only further confirm for American Christians that you are, at best, a backslidden Christian, and at worst a heretic given over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28).
A true Christian would not be publicly defending 13-year old bullying victims on NPR, but instead would be doing everything possible to smear deceased bullied children as self-loathing and abnormal, while also striving mightily to preserve the practices which have proven so effective in culling the population of potential homosexuals.
.
Actually… I think it’s genuine Christianity that comes to the rescue, not the faux variety that dominates discourse in the Culture Wars.
Science and Reason to the rescue!
🙂