Every April, conservative social groups rally against the Day of Silence, when students across the country protest anti-LGBT bullying by remaining silent while at school. Now, though, they are hypocritically endorsing a silent protest against a woman’s right to get an abortion, known as the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) explains that a silent protest is free speech:

TEDESCO: Students have First Amendment rights to engage in speech activities. Certainly remaining silent to raise awareness about a social issue qualifies. [...] I think the most important thing is to understand that school officials think that the abortion issue is sensitive and could be offensive to people. And lots of times, school officials just wrongly think that they can shut down a speech activity because they think it’s going to be offensive to someone.

That same organization, ADF, sought to “shatter the silence” of GLSEN’s Day of Silence (DoS), instead encouraging “dialogue” — in particular, the faulty idea that homosexuality is a choice. Other anti-gay groups chastise the DoS as “evil propaganda” and “child abuse,” calling on schools to ban it because it’s simply a “cover for the promotion of homosexuality.” A coalition of groups, including the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel, encourage parents to remove their students from school that day, emphasizing that students “do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

But for the issue of abortion, this form of protest is perfectly acceptable “with teachers’ permission.” This dichotomy is the perfect example of conservatives’ hypocrisy: attempting to inhibit speech they disagree with but protect it when they support it.

Following up on their model policy to ensure ongoing bullying of LGBT students, Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom have released new model legislation about “parents’ rights.” Much of the access they seek for parents greatly endangers children and deprives them the opportunity to learn about their own identities and the world around them. Here is the risky access these anti-gay groups seek for parents:

• The right to be notified if courses teach sex education, family planning, homosexual themes, diversity issues, and extreme violence. This is broad, vague language that could scare teachers and administrators from even allowing certain topics to be discussed in class, not unlike the stifling “Don’t Say Gay” legislation proposed in various states or the failed “neutrality” policy once employed in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District.
• The right to opt the child out of any course or activity the parent finds “morally or religiously offensive.” This is similarly broad access that could deprive children of learning important information about their own bodies, their own identities, their own families, the political issues impacting the world they live in, and quite possibly the basic tenets of biology, if evolution is also covered.
• The right to opt the child in to any course or school activity that includes information about contraceptive services. “Opt in” means that the child cannot be enrolled without permission. Even though abstinence-only education is demonstrably ineffective, such a policy would allow parents to prevent public education that benefits the health of society.
• The right to review all curricula and teaching materials. Such a policy would undermine the credentials and expertise that qualifies teachers to teach and allow parents to pick and choose what their kids can learn.
• The right to access the child’s record, including grades and counseling records. This provision could be particularly detrimental to young people who are struggling with coming out and are  not yet out to their parents. Studies have found that 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT, primarily because of family rejection.
• The right to remove the child from school on days of religious observance. This policy is already in place.
• The right to be informed of all disciplinary proceedings. As with the counseling records, this policy could similarly out young people to their parents without their consent, particularly if simply being a victim of anti-gay bullying warrants a disciplinary record. Administrators should have a certain amount of discretion in how to proceed in each situation to act in students’ best interests.
• The right to opt the child out of any extracurricular activity in which the parent does not want the child to participate. This is yet another attempt to violate young people’s privacy, should they be participating in a gay-straight alliance or similar group but have not yet come out to their parents.

Once again, Focus and ADF have proven that their top priority has nothing to do with protecting children, but actually ensuring that LGBT young people remain as vulnerable and misinformed as possible.

Cartoon via SlapUpsideTheHead.com

Focus on the Family and the Alliance Defending Freedom have released a new resource they call the Anti-Bullying Policy Yardstick. Under the guise of “helping parents protect their children” the guide actually features an elaborate scheme to ensure religious bullying is protected in schools while students most likely to be targeted for harassment are made more vulnerable. Here are these anti-gay groups’ bullying policy ideals:

• Bullying policies should use “precise” definitions. The goal of this is to prioritize “free speech” over a safe learning environment. ADF even suggests that some forms of harassment might be “objectively reasonable,” implying that the bully should always be given the benefit of the doubt while the impact on the victim is disregarded.
• Bullying policies should not apply to “religious, political, philosophical, or other protected student speech.” Like states that have tried to pass similar laws, this amounts to a “license to bully.” Given that anti-gay bullying is often justified by religious beliefs, such an exemption would invite bullying to persist, defeating the point of a comprehensive policy.
• Bullying policies should not examine intent or include “re-education.” According to this ideal, a student who believes it’s okay to violently harass a gay student should never be taught to understand the nature of sexual orientation. Education about LGBT issues has been repeatedlyproven to make schools safer, but ADF remains adamantly opposed.
• Bullying policies should never highlight certain characteristics (i.e. race, sexual orientation). Obviously, any sensible bullying policy covers all students, but it’s important to recognize certain types of bullying that often go unaddressed. Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District provides a prime example of how teachers and administrators neglected to interrupt anti-gay bullying or properly protect LGBT students.
• Bullying policies should have no reporting requirements. The only way to actually address a bullying problem is to identify it. A policy with no reporting requirements for teachers is a policy with no accountability. ADF worries teachers and staff might “over-report bullying,” again, seeking to protect the bullies and not the victims.
• Bullying policies should ignore cyberbullying and off-campus speech. Studies have shown that 90 percent of teens have experienced cyberbullying, but ADF believes it’s possible to distinguish between cyberbullying that happens on-campus or off-campus. Again, this reflects a commitment to protecting bullies’ speech instead of victims’ learning environment.
• Bullying policies should not include any trainings or materials from “homosexual activist groups.” ADF doesn’t believe students should actually learn about why not to bully, only how not to bully, suggesting schools “limit the instruction to a description of bullying behavior.” Learning about LGBT people is important for all young people, even if they may not identify, and it’s completely outlandish for ADF to claim such materials “promote homosexual behavior.”
• Bullying policies should always inform parents if their child is bullied or accused of bullying. This policy would be incredibly problematic for LGBT students who experience bullying, who would very likely be outed to their parents through this process. The leading reason 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT is family rejection, so schools should consider each case independently and act in ways that best protect each child. ADF’s priority is a notion of “parents’ rights” that can further harm LGBT students or protect bullies from remediation.
• Bullying policies should ignore anonymous complaints. Bullying creates a culture of fear, even for bystanders. Any student with the courage to report bullying, even anonymously, should be taken seriously. Again, ADF’s policy blatantly ensures more bullying goes unaddressed.
• Bullying laws should exempt private schools. The state guarantees an educational experience for all young people, and just as private schools should be held accountable to academic standards, so too should they be held accountable for safe learning environments.

Point for point, the Alliance Defense Fund’s model policies, promoted by Focus on the Family’s True Tolerance page, intentionally protect bullies while making LGBT students more vulnerable to victimization and harassment. This “yardstick” measures only one thing: intolerance.

Last July, the Wildflower Inn in Vermont denied a same-sex couple use of its facilities for their wedding reception. Kate Baker and Ming Linsley (now the happily married Linsleys) sued, and today they settled their suit, with the Wildflower Inn acknowledging it had broken the law.

At question in the suit was the distinction between discouragement and discrimination. A 2005 decision by the Vermont Human Rights Commission prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, but allowed public establishments to advise customers of the owners’ anti-gay beliefs. Informed by that decision, the Wildflower Inn would ignore calls and emails from same-sex couples, but if confronted, would tell them they would host the reception if they really wanted to. The anti-gay Alliance Defending Freedom argued that the inn was abiding in accordance with the law, but that simply isn’t true given the email Ming’s mother received saying that  the owners “do not host gay receptions at our facility.”

According to ACLU-Vermont attorney Dan Barrett, the settlement essentially overturns the 2005 decision:

BARRETT: What this settlement makes clear is that you can’t discourage and get away with it. Discouragement or any unequal treatment of LGBT customers is [legally] the same as an outright refusal.

ADF senior counsel Byron Babion claimed that such lawsuits constitute “attempts to coerce and police private expression,” but of course the expression is no longer private when it impacts a public customer. This would be true even if same-sex marriage were not recognized in Vermont, because this is a case about discrimination based on sexual orientation, not a “consequence” of marriage equality.

The Wildflower Inn will pay the Vermont Human Rights Commission a $10,000 civil penalty and establish a $20,000 charitable trust for the Linsleys. The couple has said it will likely donate a large chunk of the settlement to the The Trevor Project suicide prevention hotline.

Conservatives have been outraged about the passage of California’s FAIR Education Act (SB 48) last year, which mandates that schools develop curricula that are LGBT inclusive. Last year, they attempted to challenge it with a referendum, but failed. Now, they have failed again to overturn the law with a ballot initiative. LGBT-inclusive education isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

It’s important to remember the significance of SB 48. Anti-gay forces in this country regularly allege that homosexuality is a threat to children, encouraging parents to feel like they need to protect their children from learning about even the existence of gay people, lest they be “indoctrinated” or even molested or “recruited.” Consider the situation in Erie, Illinois, where parents objected to a children’s book that on one page pointed out that some families include same-sex parents. The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) argued that through GLSEN’s inclusive curriculum, students could be “indoctrinated into homosexual behavior.” Here is a quick recap of other negative responses to the FAIR Education Act:

- RANDY THOMASSON: “Realize that the raft of school sexual indoctrination mandates imposed on all children in California government schools amounts to mental molestation.”

- Signature collectors said that overturning SB 48 would protect children from child molesters.

- The campaign to overturn the law argued that kids will learn about Chaz Bono instead of George Washington.

- NOM’S JOHN EASTMAN: Evil will be with us always, and it requires constant vigilance to defeat… We need to be involved in the immediate defense of threats against marriage, but also take a long-range view by educating the next generation about the importance of the issues we’re confronting.

But despite the backlash against the law, which hasn’t even been implemented in all school yet, research has shown it will make an important difference. GLSEN analyzed data from its 2009 school climate survey and found that having LGBT-inclusive curricula helped students feel safer, experience less victimization, miss less school, and define their peers as accepting. The California Safe Schools Coalition similarly found that inclusive curricula helped students perform better academically and feel more connected to their schools. Conservatives know that learning the basics about sexuality is the key to ending anti-gay stigma, which is why they stand opposed at every opportunity.

In some ways, anti-gay hate groups have polished their rhetoric over the years, but often times they remind that they still believe the same old tired myths about homosexuality. At the core of this mythology is the belief that homosexuality is chosen, and thus it must be coerced from young people. That’s exactly what the Alliance Defense Fund believes was happening in Erie, Illinois.

The Erie Community Unit School District had adopted some curriculum resources from GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. Parents complained about one book in particular, Todd Parr’s “The Family Book,” which mentions on one page that “some families have two moms or two dads.” The controversy that erupted when the school board elected to remove that book and all other GLSEN materials reignited the national conservative war against GLSEN — a war against LGBT youth and the children of same-sex families.

This week, for no apparent reason except to prolong the conflict, the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund issued a legal memo supporting the Illinois school district. ADF’s attorney Jeremy Tedesco explained why he believes GLSEN’s materials are dangerous:

TEDESCO: Public schools should not be coerced by outside groups into indoctrinating students into homosexual behavior by exposing them to inappropriate sexual materials. Schools are supposed to be places of learning, not places where schools push propaganda on students. The school is right under these circumstances to prohibit access to the GLSEN materials and not cave to the ACLU’s demands.

By this logic, any kid who comes to school and mentions that she has two daddies is “indoctrinating” her classmates into “homosexual behavior.” The claims are simply outlandish. Having same-sex parents is neither inappropriate nor sexual, but Tedesco’s comments reflect how conservatives insist on equating anything gay with sex.

GLSEN’s mission has always been to make sure that students feel “valued and respected” regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This means creating visibility and education to counter the ignorance and stigma present in society that has been clearly demonstrated to harm students. ADF, the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council — all of whom have come to Erie’s defense — are intent on scaring parents by capitalizing on their own lack of education about sexuality. By demonizing GLSEN, they believe they can maintain the toxic climate in schools and somehow discourage young people from “becoming” LGBT. After decades of trying to erase LGBT people, all they’ve done is create harm, but they persist with their lies nevertheless.

On Friday, LGBT students and their allies will participate in the GLSEN-organized Day of Silence as a form of protest for the anti-gay and anti-trans bullying abuse that takes place in schools every day. Tomorrow, however, is the conservative Christian response, Focus on the Family’s ironically-named Day of Dialogue (formerly “Day of Truth”), which encourages students to express God’s condemnation of homosexuality to their gay peers. Over the past week, various anti-gay groups have promoted the Day of Dialogue’s harmful message while decrying the Day of Silence as anti-Christian intolerance that children shouldn’t be exposed to. Here are some examples:

• A coalition of anti-gay groups promote a Day of Silence Walk Out because “homosexuality and cross-dressing are immoral.”
• The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said the Day of Silence should be banned because it’s a “cover for the promotion of homosexuality.”
• The Liberty Counsel encourages parents to remove their students from school on the Day of Silence, and the group’s chairman, Mathew Staver, described the day as “a radical and forced agenda of homosexuality.”
• The American Family Association sent out an alert to its subscribers, encouraging parents to pull their students from school because GLSEN promotes “controversial, unproven, and destructive theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality.”
• Truth in Action Ministries described GLSEN’s efforts as using bullying to “promote and essentially indoctrinate children” into the “deadly lifestyle” of homosexuality.
• Barb Anderson (Minnesota Family Council), Peter LaBarbera (Americans for Truth About Homosexuality), and Laurie Higgins (Illinois Family Institute) condemned the Day of Silence as”evil propaganda,” “brainwashing,” and “child abuse” comparable to the Nazi Party and slavery.
• The Manhattan Declaration, a document committed to anti-gay values even if it means violating laws, promoted the Day of Dialogue as a mean for students to “express a Biblical viewpoint in a loving and Christ-centered way.”
• The Alliance Defense Fund hopes the Day of Dialogue “shatters the silence,” countering messages that homosexuality is unchangeable.
• Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is encouraging students to hand out fliers encouraging students to believe their homosexuality can —and should — change.

Indeed, all of Focus on the Family’s materials on the Day of Dialogue encourage students to use the Bible to condemn homosexuality as “broken” and promote ex-gay therapy that is known to be traumatic and ineffective. Given the overt antipathy encouraged against any LGBT-inclusive information, the day is perhaps better described as a Day of Monologue. This is a concerted effort to paint blatant in-school evangelism as welcome free speech and the stark silence of LGBT awareness as indoctrination, intolerance, and an unprotected disruption to school activities.

The Day of Dialogue is nothing short of encouragement to bully. Even if DoD participants do not attack or harass their targets, the stigma they encourage through condemning homosexuality helps maintain an unsafe climate for students with consequences that can last a lifetime. Students who have experienced prejudice-motivated bullying and victimization are more likely to attempt suicide, become clinical depression, or contract a sexually transmitted disease by early adulthood. In fact, simple exposure to stigma can increase the chances that LGBT teens experience suicidal thinking throughout the rest of their lives. Even living in a community that generally has socially conservative anti-gay attitudes can increase the suicide risk not just for gay, lesbian, and bi teens, but their straight peers as well. Minority stress also contributes to higher rates of substance abuse in the LGBT community, one of many negative consequences that can be mitigated by having gay-straight alliances in schools.

The Day of Dialogue is a direct attack on our nation’s youth, a campaign to impose not just religion in schools, but harassment, shame, and a lifetime of consequences. Not only do social conservatives oppose visible day of silence, they don’t want there to be a place in our schools for LGBT students at all.