Tag Archives: Bullying

News

Public school punishes boy for writing editorial critical of gay adoption

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From Fox News.

Excerpt:

A 15-year-old Wisconsin boy who wrote an op-ed opposing gay adoptions was censored, threatened with suspension and called ignorant by the superintendent of the Shawano School District, according to an attorney representing the child.

[…]Wegner, a student at Shawano High School, was asked to write an op-ed for the school newspaper about whether gays should be allowed to adopt. Wegner, who is a Christian, wrote in opposition. Another student wrote in favor of allowing gays to adopt.

[…]After the op-ed was published, a gay couple whose child attends the high school, complained.

The school immediately issued an apology – stating Wegner’s opinion was a “form of bullying and disrespect.”

“Offensive articles cultivating a negative environment of disrespect are not appropriate or condoned by the Shawano School District,” the statement read. “We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended and are taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.”

But Staver said what the school system did next was absolutely outrageous. He said the 15-year-old was ordered to the superintendent’s office where he was subjected to hours of meetings and was accused of violating the school’s bullying policy.

“The superintendent called him ignorant and said he had the power to suspend him,” Staver said. “He’s using his position to bully this student. This is absolutely the epitome of intolerance.”

Staver said the boy’s parents were never notified.

At one point, Staver said the superintendent gave him a chance to say he regretted writing the column.

“When Mr. Wegner stated that he did not regret writing it, and that he stood behind his beliefs, Superintendent Carlson told him that he ‘had got to be one of the most ignorant kids to try to argue with him about this topic,’” Staver said.

At that point, Staver said the superintendent told the boy that “we have the power to suspend you if we want to.”

The superintendent allegedly told Wegner that he was personally offended by Wegner’s column.

Thoughtful Christians need to understand that their values are never going to be reflected in a secular public school system. Many public schools are run by unionized teachers and administrators who must support big government, because the bigger the government, the bigger their salaries. Quite often, public schools don’t focus on making children educated so they can get jobs and be independent – they focus on making them favor bigger government.

Christians should not support parents being forced to pay into a failing public school system. Many Christian parents favor homeschooling and private schools. Why should they be forced to pay for failing public schools like the one in the story above? It’s important for Christians to think clearly about education. Christians should favor school choice, a system in which parents get a voucher from the government and then can freely choose any school they want. If parents have the right to choose their school from many options, then schools will have to compete to provide what parents want.

News

How the left uses “bullying” to restrict free speech that offends them

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From Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Full text: (links removed)

A school superintendant has labeled a column in a school newspaper thatcriticized homosexuality as “bullying.” (The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that was labeled as “bullying” answered the question “no.” The school district also publicly apologized for the column, and said that it is “taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.”)

Whatever the wisdom (or lack thereof) of featuring something like that in a school newspaper, it seems strange to argue that a viewpoint in a student newspaper is “bullying.” (The Shawano School District’s bullying policy provides that “bullying” may lead to “warning, suspension,” “expulsion,” etc.) A conservative Christian who thought that homosexuality was immoral successfully challenged a school “harassment” code that punished students with such viewpoints in Saxe v. State College Area School District(2001), a case in which a federal appeals court ruled that there is no “harassment” exception to the First Amendment for speech which offends members of minority groups. Speech cannot be banned simply by labeling it as violence, either: for example, in Bauer v.Sampson, another federal appeals court ruled that a campus newspaper’s illustration depicting a college official’s imaginary death was protected by the First Amendment, even though the college declared it a violation of its policy against “workplace violence.”

But schools and anti-bullying activists have adopted incredibly overbroad definitions of bullying. The anti-bullying website NoBully.com, and schools like Fox Hill and Alvarado Elementary, define even “eye rolling” and other expressions of displeasure or hostility as bullying, even though doing so raises First Amendment problems.

The Obama administration claims bullying is an “epidemic” and a “pandemic.” But in reality, bullying and violence have steadily gone down in the nation’s schools, as studies funded by the Justice Department have shown. The Obama administration’s StopBullying.gov website defines a vast array of speech and conduct as bullying: it classifies “teasing” as a form of “bullying,” and “rude” or “hurtful” “text messages” as “cyberbullying.” Since “creating web sites” that “make fun of others” also is deemed “cyberbullying,” conservative websites that poke fun at the president are presumably guilty of cyberbullying under this strange definition. (Law professors such as UCLA’s Eugene Volokh have criticized bills by liberal lawmakers like Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) that would ban some criticism of politicians as cyberbullying.)

It’s very important to understand what liberals mean when they say “bullying” and how they use it to silence those who might offend them. It’s using government power to force individuals to accept the morality of the state. There’s a word for that.

News

Can you rely on government to defend your Christian values?

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Here is a story from the UK, and appears in the UK Telegraph. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Last month, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that British courts had failed to safeguard the rights of Christians who wanted to wear the cross at work, and urged judges to be more sensitive to religious discrimination.

The watchdog said it would call on the European Court of Human Rights to support the principle that employers should make “reasonable adjustments” to accommodate the religious beliefs of their staff.

However, a document posted on the commission’s website disclosed that the watchdog, which is chaired by Trevor Phillips, had abandoned the plan.

Traditionalist Christians claimed that the commission had dropped its support for religious freedom in the face of criticism from secular campaigners and gay rights groups.

The controversy erupted after the watchdog was granted permission to intervene in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in the cases of Nadia Eweida, Shirley Chaplin, Lillian Ladele, and Gary McFarlane.

All four are Christians who are bringing legal action against the United Kingdom because they believe that British laws have failed to protect their human rights, specifically the right to freedom of religion.

Mrs Eweida, a check-in clerk at BA, was barred from wearing a small crucifix at work while Mrs Chaplin, a nurse, was banned from working on wards after she failed to hide her cross.

Miss Ladele was a registrar who lost her job at Islington town hall, in north London, after saying her beliefs meant she could not officiate at civil partnership ceremonies. Mr McFarlane was sacked for refusing to give sex therapy counselling to gay couples.

Last month, the commission promised to argue in the European court that existing laws had been interpreted in ways that are “insufficient to protect freedom of religion”. It proposed that employers should be able to reach “reasonable accommodations” with their staff to “manage” how workers manifest their beliefs.

However, the watchdog has now launched a public “consultation” on the arguments it should make and has abandoned the plan to call for a new “reasonable accommodation” principle to be introduced, arguing that “this idea needs more careful consideration”.

Don Horrocks, from the Evangelical Alliance, said the Commission had been “successfully intimidated against proceeding as they initially announced”.

“Being forced to be morally complicit in activities which directly violate people’s religious conscience involves fundamental human rights principles,” he said. “There is likely to be a deep sense of injustice within religious communities.”

The gay rights organisation, Stonewall, said it was “deeply disturbed” by the commission’s original plan to support Christians “who have refused to provide public services to gay people”.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said last night that it was “perfectly reasonable” for workers to be able to wear a “discreet” cross or other “symbols of identification” at work. “That is very different from saying ‘I wish to work in a public service but to exempt myself from delivering public services to people who have paid for them.’”

A spokeswoman for the Commission said: “Our job is not to take sides in political arguments between activist groups, it is to make sure people do not face unjustified discrimination.”

So what do we learn from this? The Equality and Human Rights Commission was created by the Labour Party, with arch-feminist Harriet Harman playing a key role in its administration. The goal of the commission was to fix unfair discrimination and other injustices. But apparently, they don’t mean discrimination against Christians. So we shouldn’t vote for parties on the left – they don’t stand up for Christians.