Analysis of H4571: In unanimous vote Mass. House caves in to gay lobby on "anti-bully" bill.

Adds GLSEN homosexual school guidelines; requires diversity training to school staff; extends bill to include private schools; fines and jail terms for kids; and more.

Also: What should be done about bulling in schools?  (see below)

POSTED: March 24, 2010   UPDATED: April 18. 2010

In an extraordinary move, the Massachusetts House of Representatives added language to the version sent from the Senate "anti-bully" bill to align it more closely with the goals of a major homosexual activist group, and passed it unanimously. 

(Luckily, it does NOT include the "hate speech" language that was in the original version -- which we helped get removed from the earlier Senate version.)

At the center of this bill is GLSEN, the "Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network". GLSEN is an aggressive and militant homosexual national activist group which targets children in the public schools. GLSEN's goal is to normalize homosexual behavior to school children, often in a very graphic manner. Here in Massachusetts, they were involved with Fistgate, The Little Black Book, and other horrible events. They organize homosexual "gay-straight alliance" clubs in high schools and middle schools across the country, etc.

GLSEN is behind a recent push across the country to use state "anti-bullying" legislation as a vehicle to force homosexual diversity training into public schools (including staff training), and punish anyone who voices criticism of homosexual behavior. A large part of their website is devoted to this.

	Is it really a problem? School posters for GLSEN's "No Name Calling" program focus on intimidating kids who say "that's so gay" to mean dumb or uncool:

The House bill is patterned after GLSEN's "Model State Anti-Bullying and Harassment Legislation". It also includes language similar to GLSEN's "Model school anti-bullying and harassment policy" and GLSEN's guidelines for schools. These were designed with GLSEN's goals in mind: to use anti-bullying legislation as an entrée for enforcing the homosexual agenda in schools. It's very clear that whoever wrote (and amended) the Massachusetts House bill relied on these documents.

Some of the highlights of the bill include:

• "No Name Calling Day" will be mandatory throughout Massachusetts. This is part of GLSEN's national "No Name Calling Week", which they started in 2003 as a method of intimidating middle school kids who use the word "gay" to mean "dumb" or "uncool", which infuriates the homosexual movement. GLSEN is all ready to go with their school programs for this. (GLSEN now has a separate website for this campaign.)
• A comprehensive "bullying prevention and intervention" plan is required for every school or school district -- another GLSEN idea. The bill includes a long list of requirements, must be updated every two years, and strictly adhered to.
• Mandatory reporting by school staff of all known or suspected bullying or retaliation incidents. This covers most employees, including but not limited to "an educator, administrator, school nurse, cafeteria worker, custodian, bus driver and paraprofessional" -- another GLSEN idea. (Will this cause overreaction?)
• Some private schools and parochial schools are now included in the law in the House. GLSEN's literature encourages this. (Technically, their legal connection is "schools with whom a school committee has provided or arranged to provide alternative or special education services.") The Senate version only included public and charter schools.
• Every grade must have an anti-bullying curriculum. Another GLSEN idea. Guess who is all set to provide those curricula -- probably at no cost to the schools.
• Mandatory annual training for all school staff "to prevent, identify and respond to bullying." This includes: "all members of school staff including, but not limited to, educators, administrators, school nurses, cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers and paraprofessionals." The bill has a comprehensive list of requirements for this. Another GLSEN recommendation.
• Likely GLSEN training for staff. The bill says that the state must have an "alternative" method of fulfilling the mandatory staff training requirement that will be of no cost to the schools. That will most likely be training from GLSEN, which raises millions from corporate America and has such programs ready to go.  ALSO: This training must include "research findings on bullying, including information about specific categories of students who have been shown to be particularly at risk for bullying in the school environment." GLSEN specializes in "climate surveys" and other research methods to "prove" that GLBT students are being victimized.
• Fines and jail time for kids who make crank or harassing, phone calls, emails, web pages, videos, and other "annoying" acts. We understand that's often a big problem. But we wonder if this is this is the best way to deal with it. We've seen students punished severely for fairly innocent things. And we've seen others (especially whose victims are conservatives, people with traditional values, etc.) not punished at all. This potentially criminalizes a lot of interactions between children that would otherwise be seen as normal, though not necessarily positive.
  
  [This is particularly dangerous because it seems to give the Department of Youth Services (DYS) the opportunity to get involved with the younger offenders and possibly and even take kids from their families.]
• Encourages schools to set up special diversity training based on a person's membership in a legally protected category (i.e., sexual orientation; also gender identity or expression). This is a major GLSEN thing and a big goal of the Mass. homosexual lobby - but MassResistance fought it pretty hard. This bill makes it optional . . . for now.
• Includes illegal immigrants as a new protected class (" . . . shall afford all students the same protection regardless of their status under the law.") We're not sure where this language came from. It was in the original Senate bill, but got taken out, and is now back in. It's clearly the beginning of incorporating illegal immigrants into other parts of the law as a protected class.
  
  READ FULL TEXT OF HOUSE BILL H4571 HERE

During the Nov. 17 public hearing at the State House, the Boston Globe reporter carried a GLSEN press release/fact sheet. (And the Globe articles pretty much reflected that.)

In addition, the mother from Springfield who's been the main face of the bill, Sirdeaner Walker, has been traveling around the country for GLSEN, using the tragic (and complicated) death of her son to promote GLSEN's homosexual anti-bullying legislation.

As we saw over the past several months, this was done with an incredible PR campaign of emotional bullying-related articles that just "happened" to show up in the media every few days.

An expensive knee-jerk reaction to media-generated hysteria

Given the breakdown of society, bullying has unfortunately become a bigger problem in the schools. Kids really are being victimized. But is the answer a long, comprehensive, and onerous new state law? We don't think so. Especially one designed by GLSEN, a poisonous organization that preys on innocent children and whose only interest is in pushing a radical sexual agenda.

This is unfortunately a rushed, knee-jerk reaction to the emotional media-based hysteria generated over the last few months. But it's a terrible way to make laws that will affect everyone for years to come.

What should be done about bullying in schools?

We have never seen a GLSEN-based "safety" program anywhere that had any level of success - except to promote homosexuality and transgenderism to children. If the Massachusetts Legislature were to act responsibly instead of reacting to hysteria (we realize that's asking a lot) they would look around to see what works.

For example, a few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal posted a very thought-provoking article titled Bullying: Declining or just moving online.

According to studies cited in the article, bullying in schools is actually declining, largely because of programs by groups such as the Olweus Foundation, CASEL, and others which are very effective -- and have very little resemblance to GLSEN or what the Massachusetts House just passed. The new challenge is online bullying. They take a different approach and look at the psychological causes of bullying rather than just reacting to the symptoms.

And they've found they can make a lot of progress without onerous state laws micromanaging the process. Our lawmakers need to step back and take a second look at the whole thing

 

Unfortunately, Republicans are all on board

It's hard to imagine that a bill this obnoxious would be unanimously passed 148-0. Doesn't anybody think for themselves anymore? Well, if you talk to people connected with the State House, you'll find out pretty quickly that the fear of (1) the Boston Globe and (2) the homosexual lobby (and the hysteria they can enflame) trumps everything these days, even common sense.

In addition, the state Republican party has made it very clear that they're abandoning the so-called "social issues." But does that mean caving in to this?

Here are the House Republicans who voted for this bill:
Reps. Brad Jones, George Peterson, Brad Hill, Elizabeth Porier, Jay Barrows, Vinnie deMacedo, Lew Evangelidis, Paul Frost, Susan Gifford, Robert Hargraves, Donald Humason, Jeffrey Perry, Karyn Polito, Richard Ross, Todd Smola, Daniel Webster.
You can contact them HERE.

And to add insult to injury, after the vote Sen. Richard Tisei, (R-Wakefield), who is running for Lt. Governor this November (and who recently announced he is "gay") praised the bill in the homosexual news site EdgeBoston.

What's next . . .

This bill (H4517) along with the one passed by the Senate on March 11 (S2323) are going to a "conference committee" which will create a compromise bill, although they have lots of leeway on what they can include. State House News reported that the Senate members of that committee are: Sen. Robert O'Leary (D-Barnstable) who is Senate chairman of the Education Committee, Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton), and Sen. Michael Knapik (R-Westfield). There will also be three House members, who have not been named yet. (We will let you know when that happens.

There is no deadline for the conference committee to finish its work. After that, each branch votes again on the compromise bill. So it's not over yet. But this is pretty frightening.

We will keep you up to date on what happens -- and what you can do regarding the conference committee.

P.S. The decision to go to conference committee was made in one of the Senate's infamous "informal sessions" with only two senators (Rosenberg and Tarr) in the room. As we've pointed out before, the Massachusetts Constitution requires a quorum of 20 to conduct any business. But with a wink and a nod, they "pretend" there's a quorum and go on from there. That's your Legislature at work.