Anti-Gay

October is LGBT History Month and Mission America's Linda Harvey is predictably displeased, especially about National Coming Out Day on October 11. Harvey is outraged that schools would teach students about the contributions made by LGBT leaders throughout history instead of simply telling students that "homosexual sin was unnecessary in the past and detracted from the contributions of otherwise talented and productive people."  As for National Coming Out Day, Harvey thinks it should be used to tell students who identify as gay that "they are about to enter a life fraught with disease, heartbreak, and disorder":

This sinful, disordered behavior has been with us for all of human history. It was a problem in the past, as we learn by reading the Old Testament, specifically Genesis 19, and it's a problem now. Homosexual sin was unnecessary in the past and detracted from the contributions of otherwise talented and productive people and that same remains true today. No one is born to pursue a homosexual identity.

The month of October in general has been chosen by the homosexual movement to honor this sinful lifestyle and bolster its reputation. And October 11 is even celebrated as Coming Out Day in many colleges and even some secondary schools. That's a day when kids are encouraged to declare themselves homosexual in front of classmates and teachers and it's one more way our schools, if they go along with this, are putting kids at risk. Why are all these efforts being made? Why are some adults pressuring kids to call themselves homosexual?

What kids involved in homosexuality need to be told with kindness is that this behavior is a sin in the eyes of God but that they are of great value and that they have a choice. They were not born this way and the life they are about to enter is one fraught with disease, heartbreak, and disorder; characteristics intrinsic to the behavior and not the fault of the rest of the world.

Missouri Republican senatorial candidate Todd Akin is organizing a “Common Sense Bus Tour” following Newt Gingrich’s visit to boost the congressman’s embattled campaign. While Akin seems to have lost the support of major GOP figures after he said that it is extremely unlikely for a woman to become pregnant as a result of “legitimate rape,” he has consistently held the support of Religious Right activists who adore his ultraconservative views. Eagle Forum, which is based in St. Louis, sent out this invitation:

Phyllis Schlafly invites you to join her at first stop of the Missouri Common Sense Bus on Tuesday, September 25 from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel Ballroom, 800 Washington Avenue St. Louis, Missouri.

You will find encouragement at each stop of the Missouri Common Sense Bus tour across Missouri. Each stop will feature some of Missouri's most well-known conservative leaders who are standing with Todd Akin for U.S. Senate.

With only a few weeks until the election, invite your friends and family to come out to hear why Todd Akin is the right choice to represent common sense in the U.S. Senate. Participants will vary by stop, but include the following:

• Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
• Dick Bott, Founder of Bott Radio Network
• Rich Bott, President of Bott Radio Network
• Don Hinkle, Editor of "The Pathway" and Director of Public Policy Missouri Baptist Convention
• Bev Ehlen, Missouri President, Concerned Women for America
• Pastor David Smith
• Buddy Smith, Executive Director, American Family Association

While it comes as no surprise that such far-right activists are rallying to Akin’s defense, here is why they may not help Akin improve his image among voters.

• Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum has repeatedly asserted that women cannot be raped by their husband and that marital rape is simply a myth, contrived by feminists, to get women to leave their marriages.

• Bev Ehlen, the head of Concerned Women for America-Missouri, believes that gays should deal with discrimination just as “ugly” people do and even insists that “homosexuals molest children at ten times the rate of heterosexuals” and constitute the vast majority of child molesters.

• Buddy Smith of the American Family Association has said that people “who are caught in this trap of homosexuality are in the clasp of Satan.”

• Don Hinkle of the Southern Baptist Convention has claimed that liberals are “calling God a liar” and will likely go to Hell for having “descended into the dark recesses of heresy,” and warned gays are championing an “assault of public schools” and live a “dangerous lifestyle” that frequently leads to anti-heterosexual violence and child abuse.

Seeing that Akin has said that liberals hate God and warned gay rights will lead to the destruction of civilization, it is an unsurprising group of campaigners.

Trying to boost his campaign to generate a voter rebellion against Democrats over the issue of marriage equality, Harry Jackson wrote in his column today that legalizing same-sex marriage would harm children. He asserts that gay couples who seek to become parents “put their own fleeting desires ahead of the God-given rights of their children,” whose children he says are more likely to be gay, depressed, unemployed or drug users. Jackson cited the work of Walter Schumm of Kansas State University to back up his claims, but Schumm’s work has been roundly criticized and he is closely tied to anti-gay crackpot Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute. Later, Jackson mentioned the notorious Mark Regnerus study as part of his warning against gay parenting. What Jackson fails to mention, however, is that even the journal that published his report recently admitted that it was severely flawed, noting that just two of the respondents actually “lived with a lesbian couple for their entire childhoods, and most did not live with lesbian or gay parents for long periods, if at all.”

The reason that legally defined marriage is important is because of children. It takes a mother and a father to conceive a child, and children have a God-given right to have a relationship with both their biological mother and their biological father. Children also have a God-given right to have both a male role model and a female role model in their homes. There are certainly times when tragedy takes a parent from a child, but what about the much more frequent times when adults put their own fleeting desires ahead of the God-given rights of their children? Desires change, as the breakups of both heterosexual and homosexual relationships testify.

As our nation continues to wrestle with the meaning and precise definition of marriage Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered activists consistently dismiss the issue of children. Same-sex marriage advocates insist that children of homosexual couples have the same or better outcomes than children of heterosexual couples. Unfortunately for them these assertions are based more on philosophy than hard science. For example, a 2010 study by Dr. Walter Schumm of Kansas State University confirmed that adult children raised by homosexual couples are (unsurprisingly) two to five times as likely to identify themselves as homosexual as children of heterosexuals. But the nation is divided as to whether that is an important outcome or not.

More specifically, whenever the topic of children reared by gay parents is raised: the assertion is made that there are no special problems or disadvantages because of their parents’ choices of “partners.” But this image (if remotely true) represents a tiny, disproportionately wealthy fraction of the gay population. Most of the scientists who have researched the children of such families admit as much.

Common sense would remind us that the results of any particular study depends both on how one defines a household headed by an LGBT couple, and what factors one evaluates when looking at “outcomes.” Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin, recently set out to hear the stories of the adults living in America today who were raised by parents in homosexual relationships. LGBT activists have fought vigorously to malign and suppress his findings. In short, he learned that, on 25 of 40 different outcomes evaluated, the children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships fare quite differently than those in stable, biologically-intact mom-and-pop families, displaying numbers more comparable to those from heterosexual stepfamilies and single parents.

This study included controls for age, race, gender, and the impact of being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live. Yet the respondents of same-sex parents were more apt to become unemployed, be less healthy and more depressed. They also were more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, have more male and female sex partners, experience more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life. Those raised by same-sex couples also were more likely to smoke marijuana and have trouble with the law.

At this point in our nation, no one is debating the right of consenting adults to do what they wish with each other in private. But redefining the ancient institution of marriage is an entirely different matter. This will set the stage for more and more children to grow up without a mother or a father, simply to placate the desire of adults. We must fight to preserve the traditional definition of marriage for the sake of these children.

On this day last year, the military certified the repeal of the discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy after Congress overturned the policy. Religious Right activists warned that the military will suffer as a result, however, their ominous predictions failed to materialize as studies show that the new policy is working and benefiting the military.

Consequently, it wasn’t a surprise that anti-gay groups were largely quiet today on the anniversary as their warnings about an exodus of soldiers, a drop in enlistments and a return of the draft were clearly wrong.

Ron Crews of the Chaplains Alliance for Religious Liberty released a statement that the “radical sexual agenda in our military” is leading to significant “negative consequences,” citing one example of possible sexual harassment, same-sex ceremonies on bases and the supposed “silencing” of chaplains and DADT supporters:

No Cause for Celebration: DADT Repeal Immediately Creates Major Problems for Service Members

Approaching the first anniversary of the repeal of the so-called DADT policy, mounting evidence demonstrates the negative consequences of implementing a radical sexual agenda in our military.

“The American armed forces exist to defend our nation, not as social experiment lab in which our troops serve as human subjects,” said Chaplain (Colonel Retired) Ron Crews, ED of CALL. ”While many will ignore the negative impacts, or pretend that they don’t exist, threats to our troops’ freedom are mounting.”

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“This list of problems and incidents that have arisen mere months after this administration imposed its will on the armed forces is disturbing to say the least, and we know it is only the beginning,” said Crews. “Compounding the outrage, service members are not free to speak out about these matters. This ensures that distrust in the ranks will increase and morale will decrease as the number of silenced victims grows.”

Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink also said in a post quoting Crews and calling for Congress to pass a GOP-backed bill banning same-sex ceremonies on military property, which they said would preserve religious freedom by barring all chaplains from performing such ceremonies:

Crew said that a military religious freedom act introduced in January, House Resolution 3828, would help military personnel greatly.

“It’s a right-of-conscience clause that would provide protection to military personnel, so they would not be affected by their opposition to the repeal,” he explained.

If passed, H.R. 3828 would protect members of the Armed Forces who hold religious or moral convictions concerning “the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality” from discrimination or punishment for their beliefs.

The bill seeks to protect chaplains from being ordered to perform any services or ceremonies contrary to their faith, while preventing any same-sex marriage ceremonies from being performed on military posts, in accordance with the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, who predicted an increase in rape if the policy was repealed, pivoted away from his group’s hysterical claims to instead focus on possible same-sex marriages in the military, a result of the “radical sexual and social agenda” pushed by “homosexual activists.” Sprigg also cited a survey from the Military Times, but didn’t mention that the same poll found negative views of the repeal among service members are declining.

He also dismissed claims that the military would have “completely collapsed in the first year after repeal” since “our service members are too professional to allow that to happen,” but FRC president Tony Perkins did in fact predict the reinstitution of the draft and that congressmen who voted for the repeal will have “blood on their hands.”

Since eight servicemembers reported harm from both circumstances (a homosexual “coming out” and one joining their unit), a total of 36 separate individuals reported such harm. The Palm Center chose to emphasize that this was only 4.5% of all those surveyed—failing to mention that it represents twenty percent of those who had a homosexual “come out” or join their unit. Twenty percent represents a significant risk of harm for the units involved—merely to advance the goals of the sexual revolution. Damage to good order, discipline, morale, and unit cohesion need not be universal to be unacceptable.

In the same Military Times survey, 8.4% of respondents said that repeal made them less likely to remain in the military, while only 3.3% said it would make them more likely to remain.

The Palm Center report almost completely ignores the most significant harms that have become immediately apparent in the first year since repeal. Predictions that the use of the military to advance a radical social/sexual agenda would place us on a “slippery slope” have clearly come true. Furthermore, assurances given in the November 2010 report of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) regarding the limited impact of repeal have not been fulfilled. Since the CRWG report was to a large extent the basis for the Congressional vote for repeal in December of 2010, it can even be argued that repeal was adopted under false pretenses.

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Has America’s military completely collapsed in the first year after repeal? Of course not—our servicemembers are too professional to allow that to happen. The military is clearly being used, however, to advance a radical sexual and social agenda. The Palm Center cited one individual who stated that repeal “will help facilitate the slow cultural change towards greater acceptance” of homosexuality.

The purpose of our armed forces, however, is not to “facilitate cultural change.” It is to fight and win wars. By demanding that it do more than that, homosexual activists have undermined the single-minded focus that is necessary for military effectiveness.

William Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition not only told the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios that Islam is not a religion, but also that the U.S. fails to understand Muslims because our diplomats are homosexual elitists. Murray, who in 2009 maintained that gays cause train crashes, alleged that since Libya Ambassador Christopher Stevens “was probably a homosexual” and that “many of the diplomats” the State Department sends to the Middle East “are homosexuals,” they are unable to understand the violent nature of Islam since they only “deal with people on an elite level that aren’t really truly Muslims.” He argued that Muslims who don’t engage in violence are actually “apostates” and faithful Muslims are violent, lamenting that “we send nutcases over there who are dealing with apostate Muslims and then they report back” that Islam is a peaceful religion. Later, Murray said that unless the U.S. changes our views on Islam “there is no way we can survive...without tremendous losses.”

Murray: The problem is the core of Islam. This is what it teaches and to say that this is a small number of people—no, the small number of people are the ones that are peaceful in Islam and they’re apostates, they aren’t true believers. But those are the ones that our elites are used to doing business with, those are the ones that the businessmen in the West, they’re dealing with the apostates; our politicians, our ambassadors are dealing with the apostates. Look at Christopher Stevens, the ambassador that was killed, he was probably a homosexual. Many of the diplomats, the State Department diplomats that I meet with in the Middle East when I go are homosexuals. When I went to the Jordanian embassy a few years ago the ambassador took the group of us that were there on a fact-finding mission and he wanted a picture of us with him in front of a rainbow colored flag, not the US flag. We send people there and they deal with people on an elite level that aren’t really truly Muslims, we send nutcases over there who are dealing with apostate Muslims and then they report back that this is Islam. This is not Islam. What Islam teaches is what is being dealt in the streets.

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Rios: One last question Bill, the question that you do address in this article, can we survive four more years of this treatment toward Islam, our attitude toward Islam, the way we’re managing the world on this issue, can we survive it?

Murray: No. There is no way we can survive four more years of this kind of weakness, not without tremendous losses. At some point, showing this kind of weakness, dominoes are going to fall in the Middle East and the oil supply is going to be history. The only good thing about that is we actually have more oil than the rest of the world, maybe we’ll finally be forced to extract our own oil.

His remarks were not that different from those of AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer, who similarly argued without any evidence that Stevens was gay and “so it is no wonder that he was sexually molested.”

In an article for World Net Daily, Murray said “violence is simply rooted in the teachings of Islam” and that Obama is bringing in Muslim immigrants to reshape the “Bible Belt.” The Democratic Party, he suggested, has garnered Arab-American supporters because it is willing to help them “reshape [America] into a Muslim state under Shariah law.”

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have the liberal mindsets that bring nations to war. The attitude of appeasement and surrender always ends in conflict. Instead of fighting radical Islam, the Obama administration has stepped up immigration for Muslims to the United States, using Bible Belt cities like Nashville and Atlanta as hubs.

The liberals believe that bringing Muslims to America will cause them to be moderate and change their Islamic beliefs. Muslims are not going to change the words within the Quran to satisfy the liberal mindset of the American establishment or the editors of the New York Times. Immigration to America will not change devout Muslims who are commanded by their religion not to integrate. At the Democratic National Convention it was the “Arab-American” section that booed the loudest when “God” was introduced back into that party’s platform. Most real Arab-Americans are Christians who have fled Muslim persecution and were not represented at the Democratic convention.

The 100 Muslim delegates to the convention wore “Arab-American” T-shirts, but the reality is they do not want to be part of this nation; they want to reshape it into a Muslim state under Shariah law. Most Muslims in this nation see Obama as their hope to achieve that end.

Can America survive another four years of Barack Hussein Obama’s appeasement of radical Islam? Because of the increased proliferation of nuclear arms to insane Islamic regimes such as those in Pakistan and Iran, the answer is no.

This weekend on her radio show, Mission America’s Linda Harvey hosted Ohio pastor Greg Davis to talk about the billboard his church put up last year which read: “Homosexuality is a sin… but Christ can set you free.” Harvey congratulated Davis for taking his stance on homosexuality to the streets in order to “set people free,” hoping that more people would follow their example and make their anti-gay views public. Davis told Harvey that the billboard was necessary to tell young people that the gay “lifestyle will destroy” and “devastate” them, angry that teens are apparently being “pushed and encouraged for this lifestyle.” He said that schools should promote the discredited and damaging ex-gay therapy, lamenting, “That’s not there, and that’s what we want them to put in there.”

Harvey: In working on this issue for now, it’s been 18 years that God called me into speaking out about this issue, and it’s been quite an adventure, I would have to say. I found out that there are an awful lot of people that won’t speak out themselves but behind the scenes they will tell you how much they support what you’re doing and so we just have to, some people just need to step out, and you did and God bless you for that, and take the heat. We have to keep the truth in front of people, also the fact that truth can be spoken and it is not hateful, it is loving, there is nothing hateful about this message, it will set people free, right?

Davis: Yes. We love people. We feel this lifestyle will destroy, especially a young teenager, a young man or girl in their twenties, this lifestyle will devastate them, but that’s masked at the beginning. For the average teenager who may go to their school teenager or their principal or they may disclose to someone that they’re having these feelings, they would be encouraged to follow them. There is no voice there to say ‘let’s wait a minute, let’s seek some help, we will try to find some counselors for you, have people pray with you and you can have victory over this in your life.’ That’s not there, and that’s what we want them to put in there. I prayed almost every day that there would be some teenagers and young people just driving down the freeway with their parents and would read that sign and be encouraged to seek some help and to find it, because they are pushed and encouraged for this lifestyle.

William Owens Jr., whose father William Owens works for the National Organization for Marriage and runs the right-wing Coalition of African-American Pastors, is out with a new article suggesting that President Obama is preparing for a dictatorship and may even be a Muslim. He charges that the “anti-American” Obama wants to “render America decrepit and ripe for a dictatorial-style second four-year term” and to do this the Democrats must do away with God: “The God of the Bible has been rejected by this party as they have welcomed the god of another. With a record increase of Muslims in attendance, the message is clear and President Obama has raised the stakes for the fight for America by throwing in all the chips.”

Owens Jr. also claimed that Obama, simply by personally endorsing marriage equality, intends to “pass laws that would threaten to jail and/or fine pastors who didn’t perform” same-sex nuptials because he “believes pastors to be homophobic and is committed to punishing such thoughts by law” and wants to “destroy the family – by doing away with it.”

“The trajectory of Obama is leading to a tragedy of untold proportions and in less than 60 days,” he writes, “if we don't remove him, I'm afraid that tragedy is set for America.”

The trajectory of Obama's ideology has finally arrived at its dark destination … a godless America, a family-less America, and an un-American America.

Since Obama has taken the White House, he has been effective in his quest to fundamentally change the course of America. He realizes this is not possible unless he removes the fundamentals of America: God, family and country, even if it means going against the wishes of most Americans, which he has done with disdain and contempt.

In 2008, Obama started his first days as president with a world tour apologizing for America's exceptionalism in hopes of propping up other countries by putting America down. He relished the opportunity to vent a well-fostered resentment for the country that voted him in as president. A people who fall prey to both Black pride and white guilt became victims of his twisted ideology. Americans did not expect a president would use the sacred office to dislodge their country with a methodology that smells of corruption, deception and apostasy.

You may kiss the bride," says the pastor as two people of the same sex lean over to kiss each other inside a Bible-believing church. Why? Because Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage would pass laws that would threaten to jail and/or fine pastors who didn't perform these unions among a group that accounts for less than 2% of the American population. He believes pastors to be homophobic and is committed to punishing such thoughts by law. It is a fact that most Americans, regardless of their religious beliefs, view marriage as being between ONE man and ONE woman. This is how he has purposed to destroy the family – by doing away with it.

It is not Obama's concerns for the homosexual that has prompted him to support same-sex marriage. It is for the vote and the moneybag. Obama is a master at using individuals as well as groups to accomplish his objective, and if it means taking anti-American positions, he will do it. If it means falsifying genuine concern for a group of people to attain their money and their vote, he will do it. How do I know? It's a reality. Just ask Black Americans. Ask Jeremiah Wright. To render America decrepit and ripe for a dictatorial-style second four-year term, Obama must show just who he is and rally to himself two type of supporters: those who get it and love it, and those who don't have a clue and love it any way.

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The God of the Bible has been rejected by this party as they have welcomed the god of another. With a record increase of Muslims in attendance, the message is clear and President Obama has raised the stakes for the fight for America by throwing in all the chips.

More than Obama, however, we Americans, evangelicals and pastors of the Judeo-Christian faith have become passive and have not fulfilled our duty to defend our faith and to speak the truth.

The trajectory of Obama is leading to a tragedy of untold proportions and in less than 60 days, if we don't remove him, I'm afraid that tragedy is set for America.

Only God, whom the Democratic Party has rejected, can and will save America. Unless those who believe and honor this God, of which much of America was founded and arise in His name, many believe America's real hope is lost.

It's really not about what Obama will do; it's about what most Americans won't do: stand up for our Freedoms and Liberties given by God not by a man nor by President Obama himself.

NOM even posted a video of Owens Jr. and his father along with right-wing activist Johnny Hunter denouncing Obama in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In a radio bulletin that either reveals a stunning level of ignorance or sheer insanity, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said that the National Organization for Marriage’s campaign to boycott Starbucks over its stance on gay rights called “Dump Starbucks”—which so far has collected fewer than 50,000 signers—is responsible for a $10 billion loss in profits. “Siding with radical homosexuals has its price in this country,” Perkins said. “And in Starbucks case, the cost is about ten billion dollars.”

That’s right, the FRC chief says that the company’s decision to endorse marriage equality in its home state led to its recent troubles, while providing no evidence as to how NOM and its fewer than 50,000 fellow boycotters contributed to Starbucks’ drop in stock value.

It didn’t take long for Starbucks to lose bucks over marriage. Hello, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington. In January, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said endorsing same-sex marriage would be good for business. Boy was he wrong! Siding with radical homosexuals has its price in this country. And in Starbucks case, the cost is about ten billion dollars. That’s how much the coffee giant’s lost in stock value since the campaign to Dump Starbucks got underway. In the last eight months, the company's missed sales projections and watched stocks dive from $61 to $48, for a loss of more than $10.2 billion. How many companies will fall for the lie that endorsing same-sex marriage will help business? J.C. Penney’s tried it. Target’s tried it. Now Starbucks. And every time, there’s a reason to believe that alienating millions of customers will directly affect a company’s bottom line. On the flip side, look at Chick-fil-A. They found out that supporting traditional values pays just as many cultural dividends as financial ones.

Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, has been working with Focus on the Family to put together an “anti-bullying yardstick” that provides quite weak and watered-down measures to fight bullying. But backing ineffective measures to combat bullying may be the point, as the Religious Right has fiercely opposed comprehensive anti-bullying policies because of protections that would help curb anti-LGBT bullying, even to the point of supporting loopholes for bullies. Ironically, just today the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) released a report detailing the disproportionately high rates of bullying faced by LGBT youth, and how such bullying is less likely to materialize in schools with stronger anti-bullying policies.

ADF attorney Matt Sharp appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday to denounce “oppressive” anti-bullying policies, and while Sharp insisted that the campaign is not linked to either the ADF or Focus’s anti-LGBT advocacy, it probably didn’t help that he was speaking to a talk show host who has consistently denounced LGBT rights and people. Just before Sharp appeared on her program, Mefferd criticized the Democratic Party for backing marriage equality by asking, “where’s the lightning?”

Sharp said that gay rights groups are using bullying as “an avenue for them to insert their homosexual agenda into the schools” and promote “the re-education of students.” He claimed ADF and Focus will provide an alternative to “the propaganda of homosexual activist groups that seek to promote their agenda in the schools,” describing their “propaganda” as books that dare to recognize the reality that some children are raised by same-sex couples!

Sharp: It’s important for schools to have proper respect for the First Amendment rights of students to express their views on religion, politics and other subjects without fear of being labeled as bullies or being punished by an oppressive anti-bullying policy that violates their rights.

Mefferd: Definitely, so we’ve seen a lot of these activist organizations getting involved in the schools, GLSEN is one that comes to mind because they’re been so big and have been so active, talk a little bit about what they have done in the way of anti-bullying policies?

Sharp: Yeah, we’ve seen several instances where they will come into schools and place pressure upon schools to adopt their model policies that are really just an avenue for them to insert their homosexual agenda into the schools. We actually saw a situation not too long ago up in Iowa where the group was promoting the re-education of students and tolerance training and all of this stuff that was meant to normalize same-sex marriage in these books they were giving to young elementary students portraying a family with two daddies and two mommies and things like that. The school district really didn’t know how to respond so it was important for us to get involved with them and help them to know that you don’t have to cave into these groups, there’s alternatives, that’s why we’re really excited about teaming up with Focus on this to provide an alternative to schools, to help them know what a proper anti-bullying policy that protects all students equally looks like without having to accept the propaganda of homosexual activist groups that seek to promote their agenda in the schools.

Sharp later asserted that groups like GLSEN “focus upon specific characteristics and elevate those to say ‘bullying against this is really bad and we don’t want that in school but other types of bullying may be tolerable.’” Actually, that is exactly what the ADF is doing by supporting religious exemptions for bullying. He even speak about bullying as almost only dealing with physical harm, which again ignores the serious harm posed by verbal abuse, cyber-bullying and harassment.

His argument is that enumeration, the policy of mentioning certain distinguishable characteristics tied to bullying to help combat bullying not only after it occurs but also to prevent it from happening in the first place, somehow doesn’t protect all students. For example, research shows that students with mental and physical disabilities are more likely to face bullying, and therefore enumerated anti-bullying policies frequently list ability as a highlighted characteristic. Similarly, studies demonstrate that LGBT and LGBT-perceived youth have a higher likelihood of being bullied.

Policies that mention sexual orientation and gender identity, along with ability, race, class, sex, national origin and religion, as characteristics that are linked to bullying help strengthen anti-bullying programs and don’t leave anyone out, as Sharp implies.

But ADF and Focus don’t really have a problem with enumeration, they just have a problem with anti-bullying plans that may be used to protect LGBT students. If ADF or Focus simply took a principled stand against enumeration in anti-bullying policies, then why haven’t these groups denounced them before they began including characteristics like sexual orientation and gender identity?

Indeed, putting an added emphasis on factors that are commonly connected to bullying does not make any student less protected—or as Sharp baselessly argues, allow for other cases of bullying—but help reduce bullying and create a safer climate for all students.