Tuesday, March 05, 2013

The anti-bullying fad

Anti-bullying laws and policies have become a huge new fad. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:
SANTA CRUZ -- County school districts are targeting a common problem: bullying.

To curb the mean-spirited behavior that often involves students singling out a classmate for ridicule or exclusion, school district leaders countywide are ramping up enforcement as part of a new state law known as AB 9, or Seth's Law.

The law was named after 13-year-old Seth Walsh, who killed himself in September 2010 after years of harassment from classmates based on his sexual orientation.
Seth Walsh's problem was not his sexual orientation. No one knew his sexual orientation. He was only 13 years old. His problem was that his single mom tried to rear him as gay, even tho he wanted a girlfriend. The kid might have been fine if he had a dad.

Minnesota has passed an anti-bullying law that defines bullying as:
use of one or a series of words, images, or actions, transmitted directly or indirectly between individuals or through technology, that a reasonable person knows or should know, under the circumstances, will have the effect of interfering with the ability of an individual, including a student who observes the conduct, to participate in a safe and supportive learning environment.
This is ridiculously vague and contrary to free speech.

The much bigger problem for grade school boys is that most of the teachers are women, and they force the boys to behave like girls.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another twist of the truth.

Seth's grandparents insist their grandson knew from an early age that he was gay. "Wendy did everything humanly possible to help him understand his world and to support him," Jim Walsh, a retired school principal, told TIME. "And so did his brothers and sister." But it was something young Seth had trouble accepting. "Initially he wanted to have a girlfriend," says grandmother Judy Walsh, a retired schoolteacher. "He wasn't happy with his orientation. He read the Bible a lot. This was not the way he wanted to live his life, but that's what he was dealt with."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2023083,00.html#ixzz2MgoboARy

He wasn't happy about his orientation, so his mother and family supported him.

This is some spin...

Seth Walsh's problem was not his sexual orientation. No one knew his sexual orientation. He was only 13 years old. His problem was that his single mom tried to rear him as gay, even tho he wanted a girlfriend. The kid might have been fine if he had a dad.

George said...

Yes, it appears that the maternal grandparents tried to make Seth gay also.

Anonymous said...

Sure, I should have figured that this would be a point that you'd think was being made. See things how you want to see them and not how they might be.

George said...

It is not possible to predict the future sexual preference or orientation of a 5yo boy. If the grandparents were trying to do that, they were doing Seth a grave disservice.

Anonymous said...

That's not what they were doing. They were letting him be what he wanted to be.

Anonymous said...

I clearly remember having dreams of flying around on the red Pegasus on the Mobil Gas sign with Annette Funicello of the Mouseketeers when I was three. Then there was the beautiful blonde girl in my preschool who got promoted to kindergarten when September came while I had to stay with the four-year-olds -- sigh. Who could've predicted that five-year-old me wouldn't be gay?

George said...

I doubt that 3yo fantasies can be used to predict adult sexual orientation, but maybe some academic researcher will prove me wrong someday.

Anonymous said...

George doesn't believe that others should influence how parents raise their children until he doesn't like or agree with how they are doing it.

George said...

I do think that parents should have the autonomy to rear their kids according to their own beliefs. However they are asking for trouble if they let others convince them that a toddler is gay, and then try to raise the boy as being gay.

If there is some way of identifying kindergarten boys as likely to be gay when they grow up, I would like to see the evidence published. All known attempts have failed.

Anonymous said...

Well if the parents should have autonomy, they can "ask for" whatever trouble they want to ask for.

Anonymous said...

My grandmother and mother had me playing with paper dolls when I was 3 and 4, but I was still an oversexed straight little boy.

--Pegasus

George said...

Lucky you. Here is a story about a transgender 6-year-old upsetting everyone.

Anonymous said...

"use of one or a series of words, images, or actions, transmitted directly or indirectly between individuals or through technology, that a reasonable person knows or should know, under the circumstances, will have the effect of interfering with the ability of an individual, including a student who observes the conduct, to participate in a safe and supportive learning environment."

Jesus. "transmitted directly or indirectly" - utterly unnecessary. "Under the circumstances" - redundant. Everything is always in a context. "Have the effect of". Completely unnecessary. "knows" - since we are talking about a hypothetical person, it's useless to that that this hypthetical person "knows or should know" something. "including …". Unnecessary, unless it was meant as a restriction, and if it was then it should have said so.

"use of words, images, or actions that a reasonable person should know will interfere with the ability of an individual to participate in a safe and supportive learning environment."

I mean - it's still bull. But way clearer and means the same thing.

Anonymous said...

Parents don't make their kids gay, They do try to make them mathmaticians and shove math contests down their throats.

Anonymous said...

I always loved math and was a member of the #1 high school math team in the state. Not only was my dad bursting with pride, but every teacher I ever had in every subject at that school stopped me in the hallway to say congratulations.

George's kids sure don't need any tutoring in math, due to their heredity. What they need, like any child, is the human right to a personal relationship with their biological parent so they can know him like a real person, with remarkable capabilities and also flaws.

Maynard G. Krebs used to say:
Real.
Human.
Being.
Three very challenging things for any of us.

--Pegasus