Earlier this week, a diverse coalition of religious and education groups led by the American Jewish Committee and Religious Freedom Education Project released a set of what they called bullying “guidelines.” While little actual advice was given, the guidelines suggested that bullying has little to do with the “disagreements” that happen between students and that priority should be given to ensuring that students’ religious condemnations of gay students have a fair hearing.

In response, the Anti-Defamation League urged Education Secretary Arne Duncan to disregard the guidelines because they are “ill-conceived, unnecessary, deeply flawed, and counter-productive to confronting the growing and serious problem of bullying and cyberbullying”:

Directly contrary to the Department’s Dear Colleague letter, however, the Guidelines issued this week emphasize students’ First Amendment rights over the responsibility to create a safe learning environment for all students — especially vulnerable minority, disabled, and LGBT students.  While we agree that students’ free speech and religious expression rights are important, we strongly disagree with the Guidelines’ direct implication that such rights have been given short shrift in current federal and state law and policy and need greater protection.

The Guidelines issued this week have the word “Bullying” in their title, but break no new ground and offer no insights on preventing bullying.  Even worse, they are tone-deaf as to the actual dynamics of real-world bullying in our nation’s private and public schools.  Bullying situations very rarely erupt as conflicts over political or religious speech.  Instead, they much more often involve the intentional targeting of an individual with less physical or social standing for physical or verbal abuse.  Targeted students are in a very different power position than those doing the bullying.  The aggressor’s objective is not to convince his/her target of the rightness of a policy position – it is, rather, to cause physical or emotional harm.

The ADL’s rebuke is significant because of the variety of religious organizations that had signed onto the guidelines. What’s most important is not protecting religious speech, but making sure that all students have a safe and welcoming environment in which to learn.

Earlier this week, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins seemed oddly out of the loop about what LGBT organization Target is supporting with its new Pride t-shirts. The answer, of course, is the Family Equality Council, an organization committed to making sure all families are supported under the law. In an interview on CNN yesterday, Perkins seemed to indicate why he was unfamiliar with the equality organization’s work: he’s never been to the home of a married same-sex couple.

This is a situation the Equality Council seeks to rectify. Today, Executive Director Jennifer Chrisler has sent an official letter (PDF) to Perkins inviting him to join her and her family for dinner:

I would like to extend an open invitation for you and your family to visit my home and have dinner with my spouse and children with the full hope that you will witness the love that exists in our families. While I recognize it may not change your mind, I hope that it might soften your heart.  As Christians, I think we can both agree that ours is not to judge and that we must live by the golden rule. I open my table to you and invite you to get to know me and my family.

Even if nothing comes of the experience, at least you can say you spent time with our families and knew us and still deny us our equality.  But I know you will find that our families have much in common and share the same hopes and dreams for our children.

The invitation parallels Dan Savage’s recent acceptance of the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown’s debate challenge, in which Savage invited Brown to a private dinner in his home followed by a recorded debate.

Same-sex families have become a ubiquitous part of American culture, despite conservatives’ continued attempts to erase them from our laws, schools, and communities. These families are refusing to be invisible anymore, and how anti-gay leaders like Perkins and Brown respond will be quite telling. Will they continue to reject these families, proving that they are motivated entirely by animus? Or will they open themselves to learning about the lives they have committed themselves to demonizing?

After Jessica Barba (right) was suspended, some of her friends, like Hannah Babbino (left) made t-shirts to support her and her anti-bullying video.

As a project for a persuasive speech class, 15-year-old Long Island student Jessica Barba created a video about a fictional girl named Hailey who committed suicide after experiencing extensive bullying and cyberbullying. For that, Longwood School District suspended her for five days, with Superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer calling the video “unfortunate in that it created a substantial disruption to the school.” The school also told her that removing the video would help “soften the blow” of her punishment, but after her suspension was passed down anyway, she reuploaded it. The school also took down the fictional Facebook page Barba had created for the character in the video.

Yesterday, however — after Barba had already missed several days of class — the school decided to lift her suspension and wipe it from her record. She reacted to the decision:

BARBA: I’m going back to school, and that’s what I wanted… The school did the right thing… they turned a wrong into a right, and that’s all that matters. It feels great to have made [the video] go around the world and made it get to different children’s eyes, and I hope made kids be inspired to be not bullies, and stand up for bullying. Speak up, speak out, and that’s what I’ve been saying.

Neither Jessica nor her father would comment on the school’s intention for suspending her in the first place. As one Longwood alum wrote in response to the incident, “The disruption was there before Barba’s project. It is she who is bringing the disruption to light and challenging others to talk about and deal with a real and dangerous problem.”

Watch Barba’s video, which now has over 130,000 views on YouTube: