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Thursday, March 27, 2008
People on the right have a troubling tendency to cherry-pick the types of bigotry they choose to denounce. We saw this recently when Sen. John McCain issued a carefully worded, “categorical” repudiation of Rev. John Hagee’s anti-Catholic remarks. McCain, who had earlier embraced Hagee’s endorsement of his candidacy and publicly praised the right-wing preacher, was careful not to mention anything about Hagee’s anti-gay statements or his anti-Muslim statements in his belated repudiation.
Unfortunately, a similar thing is happening with the Safe Schools Bill that is currently being considered in the Florida Legislature. The bill seeks to address the problem of bullying in the public schools, which as we have seen recently can have deadly consequences. State Rep. Nick Thompson, who introduced the bill in the Florida House, has insisted that it is intended to protect all students from bullying. In fact, the text of the bill says it would “prohibit bullying and harassment of any student or employee of a public K-12 educational institution…”
But in the section of the bill that defines bullying, the bill only specifies “sexual, religious or racial harassment” as categories of bullying based on a person’s inherent characteristics or ethnic background. Conspicuously absent from the bill is any mention of bullying based on a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity and expression. Yet studies have shown that anti-gay bullying is by far the most prevalent form of bullying in the schools. Oddly, the bill also omits other categories that have traditionally been included in civil rights legislation, such as disability and national origin.
Anyone who has followed the history of safe schools legislation in the Florida Legislature knows that homophobia has blocked efforts to pass an anti-bullying bill for seven straight years. Right-wing groups and individual conservative legislators have used a variety of tactics to block any anti-bullying bill that included protections for gay and lesbian students. In 2006, Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff led a compromise effort to pass a Safe Schools Bill that did not specify any categories of bullying. Thus, it did not specifically mention students who are targeted based on their race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, etc. But the bill did allow individual school districts to adopt anti-bullying policies that specified categories, including sexual orientation. That bill passed the Florida House but died in the Senate when then Senate Majority Leader Tom Lee refused to let it come up for a vote.
While an argument can be made for eliminating all categories — although it doesn’t appear to be the most effective approach — I can’t see how anyone can argue for including some groups but not others.
Gay rights advocates, including Equality Florida, which has been trying to pass a safe School Bill for seven years, argue that the bill must be specific in order to be effective and enforceable. They want to add sexual orientation, gender identity and expression as well as national origin, disability and physical appearance to the bill.
“We believe it needs to be crystal clear and as specific as possible,” says Straton Pollitzer, deputy director of Equality Florida. “The Supreme Court has said that to enforce any kind of civil rights legislation, you must specify categories.”
Pollitzer believes the sponsors of the current bills included just the three categories — sexual, religious or racial — in order for the bill to pass muster in the courts. He said sponsors of the bill have told him that they just named a few categories to show examples of the types of prejudice-related harassment that is prohibited, but they sought to assure him that other groups would be protected as well.
The problem is that everyone knows that sexual orientation was eliminated from the bill to appease right-wing religious groups, who continue to propagate the absurd and cynical assertion that protecting gay students, and those who are perceived to be gay, from physical violence and verbal harassment would somehow lead to the promotion of homosexuality in the schools.
The bill defines bullying as “systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress on one or more students and may involve: teasing; social exclusion; threat; intimidation; stalking; physical violence; theft; sexual, religious or racial harassment; public humiliation; or destruction of property.”
The question is whether “sexual harassment” could also be interpreted to include harassment based on a person’s sexual orientation. Pollitzer doesn’t think so.
It is a sad commentary on our society that the two sides in the so-called culture war can’t even find enough common ground to protect school children from violence and harassment. It’s time for conservative groups to accept the logical premise that prohibiting a destructive form of behavior — in this case anti-gay violence and harassment — is not the same as promoting a lifestyle.
Liberal groups could do their part to promote compromise by making it clear that they are narrowly focused on protecting gay students — and those perceived to be GLBT — from physical harm and harassment. Gay groups should not push school districts to adopt “gay history month” agendas, for example, unless they are also willing to accept “evangelical history month” programs in the school.
But no one should be afraid to tell students exactly what kinds of destructive behaviors are prohibited — and anti-gay harassment and violence are among the most destructive forms of behavior. To not specify that such behavior is prohibited while specifying other behaviors is like passing a law to abolish slavery that mentions all affected groups except people of African descent. Of course, there were other groups who were subjected to slavery, but everyone knows that the vast majority were of African descent. Just like everyone knows that most of those who are bullied in school are targeted based on their sexual orientation, gender expression or physical appearance.
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