Did you know that many American public schools have knowingly adopted policies to promote the harassment and persecution of gay students?
You didn’t? Well neither did I until I read a piece by one Alex Morgan at FrumForum.
Morgan’s piece ostensibly is designed to promote school vouchers. Vouchers, he says, “can help liberate gay and lesbian youth from the terror of growing up gay in the typical American public school.”
Of course, giving all parents the freedom to choose where to send their kids to school is a good idea. However, as I’m sure you can surmise, Morgan’s rationales for school choice are unfair, dishonest and objectionable. Morgan propagandizes on behalf of the gay agenda and, in so doing, commits crimes against the truth.
For example, Morgan complains about “the tyranny of conservative-dominated school boards that promote anti-gay hostility as a matter of policy.” Yet he fails to identify one “conservative-dominated school board” that does this.
The anti-gay hostility supposedly engendered as a matter of policy is a figment of Morgan’s fervid imagination and a slur against political conservatives. Morgan ought to be ashamed of himself for espousing this lie.
Morgan also complains about “that other favorite conservative ‘weapon’: political homophobia, which directly enables school bullies and even prevents school districts from introducing anti-bullying laws and policies.”
I know of no school district that “directly enables school bullies,” and neither does Morgan — because none do.
And what, pray tell, is “political homophobia”? Insofar as I can tell from Morgan’s use of the term, it is a bad-sounding label cheaply used and liberally applied in order to discredit his political opponents. Or, to be more precise, it is a label Morgan affixes to conservatives who deign to dissent from the agenda of the gay lobby.
As for so-called anti-bullying laws and policies, there are legitimate reasons to support or oppose these laws and policies. So why doesn’t Morgan address the substantive merits of the case instead of impugning the motives of his political opponents?
Saying you are against school bullying is about as meaningful as saying that you are for mom and apple pie.
Of course no one supports school bullying — just as no one supports “hate crimes.” However, just as there are very good reasons to oppose so-called hate crimes legislation, so, too, are there very good reasons to oppose so-called school bullying laws and policies.
These reasons include freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion.
A crime, after all, is a crime. Murder is murder and rape is rape; and both are criminal offenses punishable under the law.
Classifying murder or rape as a “hate crime” when perpetrated against specially protected minorities has a more nefarious and underhanded purpose. The intent is to stigmatize certain modes of thought, often religious thought, which presumably helped bring about the “hate crime.”
Many of the so-called anti-bullying laws, likewise, are nothing more than attempts to ban, censor and stigmatize religious folk who harbor moral objections to homosexuality.
Given that every major religious tradition in the world — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism et al. — has moral proscriptions against homosexuality, it is easy to understand why religious groups oftentimes oppose so-called anti-bullying laws and policies.
In short, Morgan espouses a good cause — school choice — for bad and illegitimate reasons. Caricaturing your political opponents into bad and evil men makes for good propaganda; however, it makes for weak and bad analysis. All of us engaged in public dialogue and debate expect and deserve better.
John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. He writes and blogs for a variety of publications, including FrumForum, the American Spectator and The Daily Caller. Follow him at his personal blog, ResoluteCon.com, and on Twitter @JohnRGuardiano.