I know this wasn’t directed at me, but in a school, I think that you could place some peripheral rules on that. In other words, students who are trying to express their dislike of homosexuality must do it in a way that doesn’t involve slurs, or even chanting in general (It’s a school, not a picket line).
For example, a student can express that he dislikes algebra and his algebra teacher, but I do believe he would go to the office if he stood up in class and said, “Fuck you, bitch. Fuck you and your stupid cunt licking motherfucking math and shove it sideways up your algebraic fat ass!”
Especially in school, just because you are allowed to express feeling X, doesn’t mean that you can express it in the most offensive way possible. Now, under the strict text of the law, maybe it wouldn’t be called “bullying”. But it could be called any number of other things that would get a kid in trouble.
What the law is trying to prevent is some ultra-liberal administrator suspending a kid for “bullying” for simply saying that he feels homosexuality is an immoral lifestyle.
Boys will be boys. It’s just a bit of roughhousing. You need to stop being so thin-skinned. Sticks and stones. It’s only kids. No harm, no foul. If you don’t react to it, it will stop. Walk it off. Get over it.
I think verbal bullying, by its very nature, depends on the intent of the individual. As for the legal quandary, I would suspect it would be similar to how we determined Conscience Objector status back in the days of the draft.
I’m just trying to understand the apparent unspoken rules here. I do have somethign to say, but don’t like to be accused of derailing threads, either, and those two desires seem to be in tension with each other.
When you say no one else is doing it, you’re not exactly right: some people are discussing the legal effects, but you’re not exactly wrong, either, because they seem to be discussing it in a way that suggests actual information about the law isn’t really a priority.
So I’d like to make that expectation explicit, and I can save my time and ignore the thread.
The desire of the majority of posters here is to bullshit about the law, and toss uninformed and semi-informed opinons back and forth, but not actually get any relevant caselaw, statutes, or legal conclusions in to mess up the discussion.
The problem with this law is that it makes it too easy to defend intimidation and harassment, at least IMHO. Teenagers are cruel, it’s part of the maturation process. I have no problems imagining a group of students harassing an admitted homosexual or even someone they just didn’t like by daily, sincerely, and quietly calling them a sinner, and unclean, and telling them they are going to hell. This in my mind is pure and simple harassment and has no place in our schools.
Hell, I remember campaigns like that when I was in Junior High and High School 25 years ago. There was one kid that everybody would call pigpen and say he was dirty and smelled even though he really wasn’t. It was a particularly nasty form of harassment, quietly telling this boy that he stunk and needed to bathe, sometimes making him explode in anger and denial in the middle of class and getting him in trouble. I am ashamed to say that I even played this game on occasion as it was a popular thing to do among a certain crowd that I craved admittance to.
I am not sure that the anti-bullying laws of today would have been effective in curtailing this behavior, but the Michigan Law sure could be used to protect and enable the harassment.
As far as the law protecting a teacher’s protestations of belief, why would a teacher need to express their disapproval of a certain type of behavior in their duties of an educator? Whether their sincere belief is about homosexuality, miscegenation, ignoring the Sabbath, voting Republican, supporting OWS or the Tea Party, or some other imagined personal stance, it is not appropriate (IMHO) for a school employee to express these types of personal opinions. I don’t want my kids exposed to this kind of education, and I am sure you won’t either if you think of all the beliefs that are antithetical to yours that could be protected under this law.
Yes, in my opinion it is a fair comment. But so what? The SD is what it is; there are all sorts of levels of education and expertise on this board, and all sorts of motives for posting. I, for one, would read your post on this subject with interest. That does not mean I would post in response saying you got it exactly right (even if I believed it), nor would I necessarily defend you if a bunch of posters jumped on you for hijacking the thread even if I thought they were morons. If you want to post, do it (I and others would appreciate it). If you are not feeling the love on this board, and need to be invited to share your sage opinion, I think you are misguided and I have to wonder why you are here.
See, I like to think that what you’ve written is true – that there are people genuinely interested in the factual aspects of questions like this. But when the only actual feedback I get is Hentor and his pals telling me what a worthless piece of shit I am for daring to inject legal facts into a discussion of a law, my motivation to post is somewhat vitiated.
Let’s be clear, you’re not a worthless piece of shit for injecting legal facts. You’re a worthless piece of shit for being a dishonest partisan hypocrite.
So inject away, or keep doing the pathetic attention grab you’re doing, either one.
So, instead of hijacking the thread over a legal discussion, you choose to hijack the thread over your sensitivity to being jumped on for supposedly hijacking the thread.
If you have something to say, say it. There are enough people here who will defend you if you get verbally bullied, even if the law won’t protect you.
Ghod! Now that you’ve shown us that you can spread it wide and spread it deep, would you mind getting off your gold-plated cross and actually comment on the topic of this thread?
Oh come on. Don’t be that guy. You’re a fucking lawyer for chrissakes, I’m sure you’ve had occasions to become familiar with the notion of people being bored to tears of blood by legalese. As I’m sure that, in your long and productive life, you’ve found ways to cope with this ghastly and rather perplexing state of affairs.
So either say your piece or shut the fuck up.
Whining that people are so mean to you here and acting all butthurt because **one **poster in one thread wasn’t interested in what you had to say is certainly less endearing to me than any amount of walls of case law and precedents. Nobody likes a guy on a cross.
Well, except for that one guy.
I told you this would happen, way back when we were arguing about a rule change to admit lawyers! Now, at my most recent count, we have as many fifteen or sixteen of them, self confessed lawyers! OK, **Spavined Gelding **is cool, but he’s the exception that proves the rule!
Why am I coming into the equation? I could be Hitler himself and it wouldn’t make *you *any less of a worthless human being.
Not that I stipulate that I’m particularly partisan or hypocritical. I vote Democrat because I’m smart enough to understand that they are pursuing the correct policies for the country. You vote Republican because it ideologically tickles your taint that poor people suffer.
As to the factual elements of my accusation:
You’re partisan, because you reflexively post, “Oh yeah, what about this Democrat!?” to criticism of a Republican.
You’re *dishonest *because you stretch minor or non-existent Democrat wrong-doings to somehow balance what the Republican in question is doing. You did it in the very post I’m quoting:
Lobohan: You are partisan.
Bricker: What about how partisan you are!!?!?!
Of course maybe you’re actually stupid enough to believe that this is valid, I can’t be sure. I keep thinking you’re not an idiot, but you keep showing that you’re unable to think very well.
And you call yourself a Christian. Christ would be sickened by you.
I should note that I posted the last bit from an old healthcare thread before, and instead of explaining your position, you created a tangent about how I misquoted you, or didn’t include the context. That wasn’t true, and further points to you being a lying scumbag.
That’s true, in the sense that whether you are or are not partisan has no bearing on whether I am or am not partisan.
I thought it might be illustrative, though, if you believed you weren’t partisan but I was, because I could then show you were applying two different standards and you might reach the realization that you were in error.
No, I vote Republican because I believe they are (in general) pursuing the best and wisest policies for the country. Unfortunately, they do not match my ideas across the board. I find, for example, a notable dearth of anti-death-penalty Republicans.
No. I also post defenses of Democrats when they are the targets of unsupported accusations.
Not correct. I denied the charge of partisanship by pointing out that I also support Democrats when they are falsely accused. I pointed out your failure to do the same in an effort to have you apply the same standards to me as you do to yourself.
It was true.
And under the same context I answered it, I can’t believe you’d answer if differently. If the proper treatment for a 95-year-old woman cost $200 million to extend her life a month, should the government fund her treatment? Yes, or no?
No? Then Lobohan says that this is a circumstance where it’s acceptable for someone to die because they can’t afford medical treatment.
Yes? Then Lobohan doesn’t say that, but shows his opinion about health care economics isn’t worth much at all.
For what it’s worth, I’m hardly partisan. I didn’t support John Edwards, did I? But if you get the impression that I don’t pile on Democrats when they deserve it, I suggest that recently, they haven’t deserved it nearly so much as the right.
Obviously right now, the political Right is attempting to define themselves as Obama times negative one. Since Obama is going to do mostly the correct things to govern the country, that means that necessarily the Right will advocate the wrong things. Tax cuts for spurring the economy and so on.
I assure you, I’m not happy about Guantanamo still being open, but that isn’t something I can hit Obama about, since it’s the result of Republican obstruction and scare-mongering. In any case, this is a tangent. We were talking about you.
I certainly believe that you diverge from Tea Party Republican in many ways.
But you also bring up nonsense tangents attempting to show that both sides are equally bad.
I welcome examples of when I’ve piled on falsely accused Republicans.
Nonsense. You posted that “It is acceptable for people to die because they can’t afford the proper treatment.” You are making a blanket statement. If Joe the Janitor has no insurance and can’t afford to get his cough looked at, it is okay for him to die of pneumonia because he doesn’t have $60.
Of course there comes a point where resources can’t meet some bullshit case you make up. The point is that Jesus would think that you advocating letting the poor die in the street because we, as a culture, can’t afford $200 million dollars a month to extend the life of a particular 95 year old is a mindless distraction.
When I’m thirsty, I could fly a rocket to the moon to get some water, or the government could make sure that the pipes in my city work.
In that instance, the Government can’t afford the treatment, not the person. There is a difference.
I understand that universal health care is much better than the system you support. And you prefer to have our system because it ends up not treating people you think are freeloaders.
Join us in the atheist tent, dude. You’re already ignoring the teachings of Christ, take the next step and free up your Sundays.