Focus on the Family Fights Bullying Prevention

by Jordan Rubenstein · 2010-08-30 08:00:00 UTC
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Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian, socially conservative organization, is on the attack. Their opponent? LGBT advocacy groups. Apparently, there’s a problem with encouraging schools to prevent bullying against LGBT students.

According to Focus on the Family, LGBT groups use bullying prevention to promote their homosexual agenda, including the idea that homosexuality is normal. Focus on the Family education expert Candi Cushman said that the group is against bullying but that bullying prevention “is being hijacked by activists.” She claims that anti-bullying programs are gay activism in disguise and that these programs conceal their true purpose.

Concealing their true purpose? According to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), almost 90 percent of LGBT students experience harassment, about 61 percent feel unsafe in school, and 22 percent reported being physically assaulted at school.  Isn’t that enough reason for LGBT groups to want to be involved in anti-bullying efforts? The true purpose of anti-bullying efforts in the LGBT community is to bring these numbers down; to make LGBT students safe and comfortable at school. Seems pretty simple and obvious to me.

And if Focus on the Family allegedly supports bullying prevention, how do they expect to prevent bullying in the first place? By teaching students that homosexuality is abnormal or wrong?

That’s simply a technique that wouldn’t work. Teaching students that being gay (or black, short, fat, Muslim, or anything else, for that matter) is abnormal will only encourage bullying, allowing students to bully others under the guise that they’re superior to the “abnormal” students.

Focus on the Family has beliefs that don’t jibe with anti-bullying initiatives. The group is attached to an ex-gay conference called Love Won Out, which attempts to “cure” gay people. These ex-gay therapy programs are harmful to LGBT people. But Focus on the Family doesn’t seem to care.

The truth is clear, Focus on the Family has no good argument against anti-bullying programs in schools. The organization is anti-gay and it’s focused on hurting LGBT people. They are opposed to anti-bullying initiatives for one simple reason -- they prioritize their agenda over the lives of LGBT students.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Jordan Rubenstein is the former president of Carnegie Mellon University's LGBT student organization, ALLIES. Jordan lives in New York City.
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