Air plane banner to vote for Obama. Photo by McBeth.
Today I got yet another email from the ACLU about "bullying," even as my daughter was telling me about yet another link that her school friends were sending around about "bullying", this time, the film about the "dirty girls". The ACLU writes more about "bullying" now more than it does about protecting free speech -- in fact, the free-speech ramifications of aggressively fulfilling their new anti-bullying platform seem to be airily dismissed.
In fact, I really had to ask myself who the bullies were when I got this notice today, urging me to sign a petition, and if they could just get 50,000 more signatures, they would *fly a plane over a local school board meeting in Florida* with a banner to say "We Stand with Baily", a girl who unsuccessfully tried to form a gay-straight alliance to "stop bullying" and was rejected by her school, whose issue was going to be discussed again at a meeting by the school board. In response to the controversy, the school is now considering simply banning *all* clubs.
Yesterday, the ACLU was joining the #StandwithRand, as if they couldn't find another way to oppose aspects of the secretive drone program without hooking up with Rand Paul -- son of Ron Paul and associated with the extreme libertarians with questionable friends. Today, we are to "stand with" someone else they've picked out.Mkay.
Does anybody else find it odd that yesterday, we were all worried, standing with Rand Paul about drones that the government would use to "strike us in a cafe in San Francisco" (!), but today we're hiring a plane to zoom right over a school board meeting in Orlando, Florida and drone a message to it?
Now, my own position is this: if you don't like a school that has gay-straight alliances or LGBT clubs, then send your kids to Catholic school or private school that you pay for. If you decide to stay in public school, then accept that there will be different kinds of clubs for all people. You don't have to have your kid go to the LGBT club, and send them to the cheerleaders' club or whatever other thing you feel is appropriate. It should be a choice. If some kids want to form a gay club, they should be allowed to do so if they comply with school rules like any other club.
The idea that the school board is trying to solve this challenge by cancelling *all* clubs sure seems ludicruous -- if they don't want the kids to join the after-school "dope smokers' club," they should try to fill their time with rewarding activities.
To be sure, I think I understand what's bothering some of these parents. Why are we having clubs that speak to issues of sexual preference at the age of 13 or 14 in junior high school or middle school? They would like to think that sex is something they should put off until high school. Many parents -- even if they are hipsters -- aren't comfortable with their children dating unsupervised at age 13 or 14. So what really bothers them with gays in the Boy Scouts and LGBT clubs in the middle school is more about open sexuality than gayness -- it means they cannot go on thinking of their children as innocent, unsexualized beings obeying their rules.
Of course, they are naive to think that their children might not be experimenting with sex even at this younger age, and they'd be better off having sex education and even access to birth control. I will never forget how my mother described teaching two generations in her inner-city high school, where students she had in 7th grade at the age of 14 got pregnant, and she taught their children 14 years later, only to see some of them get pregnant again. It was pretty grim, as these girls' futures sure began very limited when this happened.
Even so, parents are right to be protective of minors and not allow them to engage in underage sex because this is rape under criminal law. Yeah, I get it that not all aspects of LGBT life are about sex, yet because sexual preference *is* a big part of it, it's understood why parents feel uncomfortable. You are going to have to work this through and get to people's *consent* about this, however. My answer to that would be, well, then don't have your kids go to those clubs. Or, conversely, if you don't like the Boy Scouts, start another club. Or let's say you're a PETA freak. Then you won't send your kids to 4H club. And so on. Life is about choices, and we should keep having them. Yet at a certain point you have to ask: if we don'to get this club, is this going to impact the gay rights struggle? After all, you could form a private LGBT club even in your home or at a sympathetic book store. Not everything has to be organized by the state. What is your real objective here? Turning the state to your agenda forcibly, or actually getting equal rights? Yes, a struggle to get a gay club formed in a school is the First Amendment right, too.
But hiring a plane to fly over a board meeting?! That's insane, I'm sorry. It's bringing to bear on this local controversy all the aggressive, well-financed *hate* of the "progressives" now in ways that only show that they are the bullies. It's like the aggressive boycot of the chik-fil-A people (which ultimately backfired, when it faced an even more menacing threat by conservatives to come and "stand with chik-fil-A" en masse if LGBT tried to stage sit-ins. It's about teaching children that you get your way not by reason and persuasion and local democracy, but by flash-mobbing with whatever bullies you can harness through social media.
Here's my point about this aggressive, even vicious and out-size method: it is not required to obtain gay rights and it likely backfires in trying to gain gay rights, and it's my right to say so -- and I refuse to be smeared as anti-gay (which I am in repeated vandalisms of my Wikipedia entry). That's ridiculous. You can be for gay rights and for vigorously enforcing them when they exist, without having to turn into raging bullies taking other people's rights away. Local school boards can set their own policies.
I'm sorry, but flying a plane over a local school board is just morally wrong as a tatic. It invites equal and opposite -- or worse -- reactions from the other side.
Imagine if the gun rights lobby decided to fly a plane over a school board that decided not to show war movies or have any play toys or games that glorified war. Or imagine if Focus on the Family rented a plane or blimp to fly over a school board with an anti-gay message that in fact was voting to accept an LGBT participation in a prom. It doesn't take much imagination to understand how much this sort of thing would be called "bullying" or even "terrorism" if it were a tactic in the other side's hands. That's why I think it's wrong.
Here's what's puzzling about the ACLU here. Why don't they *litigate*? Is that getting too expensive for them? If they think there is a legal and constitutional case here, can't they take the case to court? This seems like a First Amendment case. Isn't it?
Or is that the problem? It isn't sufficiently bolstered in law, so they need to engage in these other guerilla tactics?
I suspect that they don't feel the cases are strong enough to litigate so they use these tactics. Absolutist First Amendment standards may be understood not to apply, especially given the right to restrict their "time, place, and manner," if it involves children where other laws may apply.
I really have to wonder how successful a person is going to be trying locally to persuade people to become tolerant of others if she martials tens of thousands of outsiders, gains Internet fame with viral views in the hundreds of thousands, and then even gets a group to fly a plane over her school board meeting.
"You have not convinced a man because you have silenced them." And all you would have done is bullied this little school board into no doubt enraged silence merely because they didn't want to be heckled by the liberal media that may descend on their town with camera crews -- and find themselves hacked by Anonymous to help burn in the message they are supposed to "learn" as well. What next, guys? Doxing of all the school board members? Finding underage pictures on their phones and claimng they are pedophiles? Well?
What happened to persuading people peaceably?
Obviously, fear of political incorrectness and the fierce harassment and indeed bullying that comes with it has induced in fact a draconian solution -- no clubs at all. That's a terrible outcome to have produced for the supposed free-speech protecting institution of the ACLU.
What if the issue were school segregation and black children were being barred from schools? Federal marshalls had to be called in to enforce the right to equal education. But that's because there was a clear-cut federal law to enforce. The issue with gay rights is that they are not as clear-cut beyond the First Amendment when it comes to something like which school clubs will be allowed.
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