On Mix It Up at Lunch Day, schoolchildren around the country are encouraged to hang out with someone they normally might not speak to.
The program, started 11 years ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center and now in more than 2,500 schools, was intended as a way to break up cliques and prevent bullying.
But this year, the American Family Association, a conservative evangelical group, has called the project “a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools” and is urging parents to keep their children home from school on Oct. 30, the day most of the schools plan to participate this year.
The charges, raised in an e-mail to supporters earlier this month, have caused a handful of schools to cancel this year’s event and has caught organizers off guard.
“I was surprised that they completely lied about what Mix It Up Day is,” said Maureen Costello, the director of the center’s Teaching Tolerance project, which organizes the program. “It was a cynical, fear-mongering tactic.”The swirl around Mix It Up at Lunch Day reflects a deeper battle between the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group founded 41 years ago in Montgomery, Ala., and the American Family Association, a Bible-based cultural watchdog organization in Tupelo, Miss. The association says its mission is to fight what it calls the “increasing ungodliness” in America.
The law center recently added the group to its national list of active hate groups, which also includes neo-Nazis, black separatists and Holocaust deniers.
Association leaders, in return, have gone on the offensive, calling the law center a hate group for oppressing Christian students and claiming its aim is to shut down groups that oppose homosexuality.
“The reality is we are not a hate group. We are a truth group,” said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the association. “We tell the truth about homosexual behavior.”
Although the suggested activities for Mix It Up at Lunch Day do not expressly address gay and lesbian students, the law center itself promotes equal treatment for gays and lesbians and that philosophy then informs the school program, he said.
“Anti-bullying legislation is exactly the same,” Mr. Fischer said. “It’s just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda. No one is in favor of anyone getting bullied for any reason, but these anti-bullying policies become a mechanism for punishing Christian students who believe that homosexual behavior is not something that should be normalized.”
The program is not about sexual orientation but rather about breaking up social cliques, which are especially evident in a school cafeteria, Ms. Costello said.
In some schools, cliques are socioeconomic. In others they are ethnic or religious or based on sexual orientation. By giving students a way to mix with other students, self-imposed social barriers can be broken down and bullying can be curbed, she said.
“Many of the targets of bullying are kids who are either gay or are perceived as gay,” she said.
But the idea that the program is intended as homosexual indoctrination is simply wrong, Ms. Costello added.
“We’ve become used to the idea of lunatic fringe attacks,” she said, “but this one was complete misrepresentation.”
Parents who are on the American Family Association e-mail list were encouraged to keep their children home on that day and to call school administrators to tell them why.
By Friday, about 200 schools had canceled, Ms. Costello said. But exactly why was unclear. Of 20 schools that had canceled and were contacted by The New York Times, only one chose to comment.
The Chattahoochee County Education Center in Cusseta, Ga., canceled because teachers were too busy trying to meet basic state teaching requirements, said Tabatha Walton, the principal.
“The decision had nothing to do with taking a position on gay rights,” she said. “We support diversity.”
Although parents did complain to Kevin Brady, the head of the Avon Grove Charter School in rural Pennsylvania, the school is still planning to hold Mix it Up at Lunch Day for its 1,600 students.
Students will each be assigned a number and then paired up by school officials. The school has a large population of special-needs students who can feel isolated and thus benefit greatly from the program, Mr. Brady said.
The school started it a few years ago, inspired, in part, by the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and examples of bully-related violence that surfaced in schools around the country.
He said the e-mail sent by the association described a program that had “absolutely no resemblance to what we do.” Once parents understood how the program worked, they decided not keep their children home that day, he said.
“I think they feel they have been taken for a bit of a ride,” he said. [source]
Guys…please.. do me a favour. When you send in stories which have a political/religious slant of sorts, please do not title the message: ” this is why I hate Christians.” ” This is why I hate the Republicans”, “This is why I hate women, etc etc.” Because frankly whether you want to believe it or not, the evangelicals in this post can NOT be allowed to represent Christians as a whole, they simply can not. The minority/fringe of any group can not be allowed to represent the entirety of the whole, they just can not.
With that being said……..
Everything I said about the people who had a problem with gay marriage in yesterday’s post, please feel free to just…just…insert that as my response here also.
: shaking my head :: Just…just sad.
Latest posts by SlausMalley McFluffy Obrien jackson. (see all)
- Man facing life in prison for aborting girlfriend’s pregnancy and…. why some men don’t think it fair he be punished. - May 20, 2013
- Wow.. maybe this is what they call Footlocker overseas. - May 20, 2013
- Animal lovers nor good people should click this. Laugh at this and you’re going to hell. - May 17, 2013
Sooo…my preggo hormones have eliminated the filter that I had that tells me what is appropriate or inappropriate to say…so:
<img src="http://mizparkermuses.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/blanche.gif?w=640"/>
<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm6hq2Nz7s1qii6tmo1_500.gif"/>
Its shyt like this that makes hope and pray fervently that the Mayans are right.
Humanity is just fugged up and fugging up and judging by the rise of religious reactionaries, we are getting worse.
Im ret to go.
<img src="http://gifsoup.com/imager.php?id=2511764&t=o" border="0"/>GIFSoup
<img src="http://i821.photobucket.com/albums/zz133/BeeKee_2010/tumblr_ldyxqgUROG1qfy0g6o1_400.gif" border="0">
HOWLIN' OVER HERE!~!!!!!
Oooh, which videos are those gif's from? I haven't seen those yet.
One was about Kat Stacks (bleach) and I think the other may be a Furious Thought. Not sure, but he stays giving life!
my sentiment exactly, kurt
Isn't this the same group that Chic-fil-A made financial donations to? Why yes, I believe it is. Hrrmmmm….
Someone please explain how the hayle did they equate chopping it up with a kid you wouldn't normally talk to over a piping hot plate of chicken ala king to promoting homosexuality?
"piping hot plate of chicken ala king" that's gay food. with all that sauce and stuff. Real americans don't eat that froo froo stuff. They should eat american food. Like ham and cheese sandwiches. With american yellow cheese, not that hole filled swiss stuff either.
Sir——————>>>>>>>>
Even the name is un-american chicken ala KING. We don't take to Kings here in uhmerica. My great great great great grandpappy didn't fight in the revolution for you to be forcin my chirruns to be eating king food with those people.
Sorry,but I have to do this<img src="http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u478/chidiva1/go_zpsabd4bd5c.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"/>LMAO!!
See. Just can't handle real american truth. That's what's wrong with this country now.
*whispers* Elvis. Some folks think he was a King.
What the hale is chicken ala king?
It's a nasty concoction that resembles vomit,it's made with chicken and any thing else you can throw in the pot.
Religion – Keeping people stupid for thousands and thousands of years!!!
By the way, Science kicked ass this past Sunday. While the religious were hanging out with their imaginary friends, science was dropping bytches from outer space and a mechanical rover was collecting data on a distant planet.
The earth STILL isn't flat.
***Bernie Mac Voice On*** I ain't scared of you mufuggas!!
Religion – Keeping people stupid for thousands and thousands of years!!!
Key word there is RELIGION…not to be mistaken with SPIRITUALITY.
Don't kill me….
<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7L-qlZzIZlE/UGsZTup4P7I/AAAAAAAAlYc/uaDg8MZf-YE/s1600/spiritual+but+not+religious.jpg">
Don't make me Kick you!!! lol
Some "good" Christians need to get better acquainted with the Word.
Even though Bill Maher posed this question to Focus on the Family, I think this could apply to the AFA also.
If you're doing God's work, and God's perfect, how come you're always wrong?
Irony – it escapes them completely.
I'm really tired of this "forcing the lifestyle" mularkey. First of all I've yet to see a gay person run up on someone with a gun and say "break that dick fool". Can't no chick run up on me like "aye girl you gone let me face love your nacho and you gone like it". No mam. We shouldn't have to take one day out of the year to be kind to someone. There's a lot of effed up people out here that I'm not friends with because I might find them creepy or I just don't get down with them but I do ACKNOWLEDGE them in love and in kindness. Sometimes people just want to be acknowledged as a human being. That really should not be hard to do when most of us want that same thing as well. People suck.