Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Ever-Expanding Concept of "Bullying" Casts an Ominous Shadow Over Free Speech‏

A school superintendant has labeled a column in a school newspaper that criticized homosexuality as “bullying.” (The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that was labeled as “bullying” answered the question “no.”)

Whatever the wisdom (or lack thereof) of featuring something like that in a school newspaper, it seems strange to argue that a viewpoint in a student newspaper is “bullying.”

A conservative Christian who thought that homosexuality was immoral successfully challenged a school “harassment” code that punished students with such viewpoints in Saxe v. State College Area School District (2001), a case in which a federal appeals court ruled that there is no “harassment” exception to the First Amendment for speech which offends members of minority groups.

But schools and anti-bullying activists have adopted incredibly overbroad definitions of bullying. The anti-bullying website NoBully.com, and schools like Fox Hill and Alvarado Elementary, define even “eye rolling” and other expressions of displeasure or hostility as bullying, even though doing so raises First Amendment problems.

Since “creating web sites” that “make fun of others” also is deemed “cyberbullying,” conservative websites that poke fun at the president are presumably guilty of cyberbullying under this strange definition.

Source

10 comments:

A. Levy said...

BRAVO Anon!!!

The amount of actual bullying, like obesity, depends on who's controlling the bar. You can raise the bar, which would create the impression that everyone is being bullied, or that every child is obese. Why do that? CONTROL!

What the Left wants, what the Left always wants, is total control over how you live your life and how your children are raised. And, they're getting closer to that goal with each passing day.

It's not easy being a sheep, is it.

Anonymous said...

A Levy, actually bullying isn't strong enough of a word to describe what the nanny staters do. Persecute is a lot more accurate.

Smokers are the only group it's still politically correct to hate, so all that hatred that they have is focused solely on smokers. Obese people are well on their way to becoming a protected liberal darling group, they will not experience a 1/10 the hate the smokers face.

Bird of Paradise said...

The stupid principal needs to be sent to the detention room for the rest of the school season and be made to read the constitution

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the principal is "bullying" the students .

Anonymous said...

Yeah and if Christians were criticized in the same way they would be very quick to claim they were victims of bullying as they are always playing the "persecuted card" and even our atheist host Jon Jay claims he supports Christians because they are such a "persecuted" group. I guess that's why all presidential candidates have to say they are Christian to have any hope of election!

Anonymous said...

I've read about this somewhere. Freedom of... .something. I can't recall, but it starts with an 's' :)

PIL said...

Obese people aren't protected, even fat people aren't protected. My last job was a company that called itself "Christian," claimed to be pro-life, yet every month we had to hear lectures about quitting smoking and losing weight.

Either way, bullying is real, of course, back in my day we either fought the bully, brought a knife to scare him of, or learn to run fast.

And while teen suicide always existed, we certainly did not kill ourselves over Facebook! Heck, I wish the bullies I faced as a child had been on Facebook. It's a hell of a lot easier to unfriend a Facebook bully than to outrun a real bully.

Shame on these anti-bully nannies for promoting wimpiness and victimhood.

PIL said...

Obese people aren't protected, even fat people aren't protected. My last job was a company that called itself "Christian," claimed to be pro-life, yet every month we had to hear lectures about quitting smoking and losing weight.

Either way, bullying is real, of course, back in my day we either fought the bully, brought a knife to scare him of, or learn to run fast.

And while teen suicide always existed, we certainly did not kill ourselves over Facebook! Heck, I wish the bullies I faced as a child had been on Facebook. It's a hell of a lot easier to unfriend a Facebook bully than to outrun a real bully.

Shame on these anti-bully nannies for promoting wimpiness and victimhood.

Go Away Bird said...

How about the principal who forces students to remove their america flag T-Shirts on CINO DEMAYO that principal needs to be fired and moved back to mexico

Anonymous said...

Certain viewpoints are not allowed. They always make contradictory statements like, "We believe in free speech, but... ".

What they really mean is, "We only believe in speech that we agree with. We will outlaw all other speech in some fashion or another."