A Stitch in Haste

In a follow-up piece to the horrific student-on-student violence in Oxnard, California, that left a gay 15-year old dead at the hands of a fellow student whom he had hoped to ask to be his valentine, a professional bigot tries to whitewash exactly how and why such nightmares occur:

"The vast majority of parents believe it's their role and their responsibility to teach their kids about sexuality," said Bill Maier, vice president and resident psychologist for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization. "The way you handle the problem is that you crack down on any sort of bullying or aggression on any child. You don't single out sexual orientation as this somehow special status."

Actually, it would a huge leap of anti-bigotry progress if schools (not to mention, e.g., the Boy Scouts) would cease to "single out" homosexuality as "this somehow special status." That's basically the whole point.

The latest "if you could only hear yourself talking" counterexample:

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey in a letter sent today called on the Newark Public Schools to rescind last week's decision to censor hundreds of East Side High School yearbooks that included a photo of a male student kissing his boyfriend.
...
At the direction of Newark Public Schools Superintendent Marion Bolden, school personnel used markers to block out the image of student Andre Jackson and his boyfriend, while allowing photos of heterosexual students kissing to remain. The photo was on a tribute page paid for by Jackson; tribute pages make up about 20 percent of the yearbook, and several others showed heterosexual couples kissing.
...
"Treating same-sex couples differently from heterosexual couples not only disregards the fundamental guarantees of the Constitution and the laws of the State of New Jersey but also sends a dangerous message to the student body," Barocas said in the letter. "The message that LGBT students are unacceptable and undeserving serves to justify peer harassment, one of the most serious concerns schools face today."

Focus on the Family and the ACLU actually agree on a major issue -- that gay students shouldn't be "singled out"?

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.