Meanwhile, in Illinois, Part 1
Jul. 13th, 2012 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedsitter232012 will go down as the year I traveled a bunch. Still, before any of that, I made a couple of trips back to Illinois in May. Here was what was in the news at the time.
- - -
There has been a big push in the last few years to stop bullying. As someone who was on the short list of kids in my school that got bullied the most, I have to say I am for these changes. Sure parts of it humor me (the WWE has launched the anti-bullying 'Be a Star', despite the fact pro wrestling is largely based on the idea of taunting and picking fights).
I don't know why I feel this way. My experience with other school programs (Just Say No to drugs, abstinence campaigns, etc.) show that they are pretty ineffectual, and I have no reason to believe anti-bullying wouldn't be the same. Still, anti-bullying programs are one of those thing everyone supports. How could you not? Who's going to be pro-bully? it's like being anti-puppy.
Still, leave it to the Illinois Family Institute, James Dobson's Alliance Defense Fund, state senator Kyle Mccarter, and Illinois Republicans to come out against the anti-bullying legislation. Mccarter and the IFI felt that the anti-bullying program was just part of the gay agenda to indoctrinate school kids to accept homosexuality and transgenderism. It seems that they held on to the pre-1980s belief that the queer indeed must be smeared.
Never mind, of course, that 20 % of Illinois students are bullied, and the biggest group affected were teenage girls. Never mind, that we live in a time of cyber bullying. Never mind that the only real reason that it seems Mccarter and Dobson's group seems to hate this bill is because LGBT activists support it.
From my experience over two decades ago, it was the most pious kids who got picked on (after the effeminate boys, of course), so it's likely the children of Dobson and McCarter who would benefit most from the bill. (Though I don't buy into Christian persecution, it was the 'bible thumpers' in school who were just as much as ostracized as the boy who liked shopping a bit too much).
The GOP won this one and the legislation was defeated.
- - -
There has been a big push in the last few years to stop bullying. As someone who was on the short list of kids in my school that got bullied the most, I have to say I am for these changes. Sure parts of it humor me (the WWE has launched the anti-bullying 'Be a Star', despite the fact pro wrestling is largely based on the idea of taunting and picking fights).
I don't know why I feel this way. My experience with other school programs (Just Say No to drugs, abstinence campaigns, etc.) show that they are pretty ineffectual, and I have no reason to believe anti-bullying wouldn't be the same. Still, anti-bullying programs are one of those thing everyone supports. How could you not? Who's going to be pro-bully? it's like being anti-puppy.
Still, leave it to the Illinois Family Institute, James Dobson's Alliance Defense Fund, state senator Kyle Mccarter, and Illinois Republicans to come out against the anti-bullying legislation. Mccarter and the IFI felt that the anti-bullying program was just part of the gay agenda to indoctrinate school kids to accept homosexuality and transgenderism. It seems that they held on to the pre-1980s belief that the queer indeed must be smeared.
Never mind, of course, that 20 % of Illinois students are bullied, and the biggest group affected were teenage girls. Never mind, that we live in a time of cyber bullying. Never mind that the only real reason that it seems Mccarter and Dobson's group seems to hate this bill is because LGBT activists support it.
From my experience over two decades ago, it was the most pious kids who got picked on (after the effeminate boys, of course), so it's likely the children of Dobson and McCarter who would benefit most from the bill. (Though I don't buy into Christian persecution, it was the 'bible thumpers' in school who were just as much as ostracized as the boy who liked shopping a bit too much).
The GOP won this one and the legislation was defeated.
