Rosalind Wiseman is an internationally recognized author and educator on children, teens, parenting, education and social justice. Her work aims to help parents, educators and young people successfully navigate the social challenges of young adulthood.
Rosalind Wiseman
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Anderson Cooper 360: Does Anti-Bullying Legislation Promote a Gay Agenda?
Rosalind recently appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 with GLSEN executive director Eliza Byard and Focus on the Family’s Candi Cushman to discuss anti-bullying legislation and whether it promotes a homosexuality. Watch the video and join the discussion by commenting on this post!
7 Responses to “Anderson Cooper 360: Does Anti-Bullying Legislation Promote a Gay Agenda?”
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October 28th, 2010 at 4:59 am
The bullies and gay bashers are not using their brains on the issue. If the lgbt community is so dysfunctional and worthy of all of this hatred, why do you care if they are lgb or t? Your constant harrassment will not make them straight and being gay is not contagous.
When I read the headline, I said “You have got to be kidding me.” Once again, harrassment will not change sexual orientation and acceptance does not cause a ‘gay epidemic.’ Sheesh!
October 5th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Eliza and Rosalind nail it. I’ve known several teachers and have family members who have been educators, as well. If the school doesn’t have a policy in place that specifically calls out the behavior, then individual teachers may not be able to step in when that teachers see anti-gay bullying going on because the teachers know there is not anything or anyone backing up. School policy (and possibly school administrators) are not on their side, without such a policy. It’s an individual teacher acting on his or her own sense of right and wrong. The teachers may take all the heat for potentially being any number of things from “too sensitive” or “too PC” to “promoting a gay agenda.” In some communities, this would be career suicide, especially if someone concludes that a particular teacher *must* be gay, because he/she put an end to homophobic bullying. Just as we can’t expect an individual student to jump in and stop anti-gay harassment or bullying, we can’t expect individual teachers to jump into the line of fire and put a stop to it either–even though they are adults, not kids. That’s not only unrealistic, it potentially puts the livelihoods and perhaps even the safety of our educators at risk. We need policies and legislation like the Safer Schools Act.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:03 am
Here, the goal of Focus on the Family is apparently to make schools less safe for LGBT students and more safe for their harassers. What twisted, evil and intolerant organization could possibly espouse these transparently manipulative tactics preying upon fear and homphobia? This is not how to uphold Christian values.
How God-awfully cruel can you be. These are children you are persecuting! And you are preying upon uncertain parents to do it. But it is so ham-handed as to alienate all but the most bigoted and unreasoning. The fearful are always your best target audience.
Religious people I have spoken to are appallled. They are now also on watch for your completely wrong-headed tactics. You’re going to have to think of better ways to pervert common sense and common law.
And, now, you’ve set yourselves up as victims again! What a comedy act! If it weren’t so awful it would be laughable. Just stick to the New Testament. The Old one is not your book. It has you all confused.
September 7th, 2010 at 12:28 am
Thank you for bringing the sanity to this conversation! I watched it with my husband and he was just shocked that anyone would think that anti-bullying education would lead to someone thinking that it was promoting a “gay agenda.” Sadly, I’ve been following their conversations for too long to know that this is exactly how they twist things into their favor.
I assume that they just simply do not like effeminate boys and tough girls and that if we can’t bully our kids into sticking to the gender roles that they want us all to live under.
Thanks again for being awesome!
September 4th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
“Controversial sexual topics” are not controversial. Candice Cushman, and the rest of whatever group you represent, you are just in denial. The only thing one could possibly use to justify homophobia is the Bible, where it does say that being gay is wrong (Leviticus 18:22) . I have two arguments against this justification: a) the Bible also states that it is okay to sell your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7) and eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10) and b) the Bible is religious text, and religion and state are separate, as stated in the documents that founded our country. Nowadays people don’t like slavery and eat shrimps, and nobody bats an eyelid, and not a huge amount of people argue that the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution is wrong. Why is homosexuality the issue attacked?
September 4th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
F*ck you Candice Cushman. This kind of political intrusiveness in schools will only make things even more difficult for young LGBTs who are trying to come out of the closet. Labelling any sexual orientation other than being straight as a “controversial sexual topic” presents the message that being different is wrong — which will only lead to more bullying and harassment.
September 3rd, 2010 at 10:18 am
Concrete rules can bring about concrete results. When rules in a school are too vague they are ignored or never addressed. That is a big problem with policy makers, watering down the rule system only makes it easier to ignore specific bullying and behavioral problems.