October 15, 2012
Private: Religious Right Sees Nefarious Plot in Effort to Foster Equality, Safety in Schools
AFA, American Family Association, Diversity, Don Wildmon, Maureen Costello, Mix It Up, Mix It Up at Lunch Day, Public Schools, Religious Right, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC
by Jeremy Leaming
Leave it to the American Family Association to freak out – and try to raise money – over an effort to promote equality and dissuade bullying in schools by tarring it as a nefarious plot to promote a gay agenda. Unless you’re a regular -- or even occasional follower -- of the machinations of the nation’s Christianist Right, you may wonder what AFA is all about. There are not too many things to know, it was founded in the late 1970s by an evangelical pastor, in part, to demonize the LGBT community and promote the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation.
For decades the group has been pounding away at those themes with varying degrees of success. Its “philosophical statement,” declares that “God has communicated absolute truth to mankind, and that all people are subject to the authority of God’s Word at all times. Therefore AFA believes that a culture based on biblical truth best serves the well-being of our nation and our families, in accordance with the vision of our founding documents; and that personal transformation through the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest biblical change in any culture.”
AFA, as noted by The New York Times, is now going ballistic over a program “started 11 years ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center,” dubbed “Mix It Up at Lunch Day.” The SPLC, a civil rights groups launched in 1971, devoted to “fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society,” operates an array of programs aimed at fostering inclusive and nurturing school environments.
One way to do that is helping educators teach acceptance of their peers, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity. One of the SPLC’s “teaching tolerance,” programs is a nationwide campaign to encourage students to share their lunchtime with different students, those they normally don’t have lunch with. “In our surveys, students have identified the cafeteria as the place where divisions are most clearly drawn. So on one day – Oct. 30 this school year – we ask students to move out of their comfort zones and connect with someone new over lunch,” SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project states. “It’s a simple act with profound implications. Studies have shown that interactions across group lines can help reduce prejudice.”
But efforts to eradicate prejudices mean something radically different to many Christianists. And in a recent statement by AFA, it attacks SPLC as a “fanatical pro-homosexual group,” and its “Mix it Up,” program as “gay indoctrination.”
“MIT [Mix It Up at Lunch Day] is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools,” AFA’s statement reads. “A strong focus is directed specifically to elementary and junior high grades.”
AFA closes its missive by urging people to call or send letters to school officials demanding them to protect their children from a “Mix it Up Day.”
SPLC’s Maureen Costello told The Times that AFA was not only dissembling about the tolerance program, but employing cycnicism and fear to turn educators away from the program. Instead, as noted in the SPLC’s website, “Mix It Up,” is part of a larger educational effort to promote diversity and equality.
The AFA has been peddling in fear-mongering since its inception. The former leader of AFA, numerous times during his tenure, declared the downfall of American society, often pointing the finger at the LGBT community. In fall 2007, Wildmon addressed a “Family Impact Summit,” in Brandon, Fla. He told a gathering at the event that America is “a society that is crumbling before us, like ancient Rome did.” Like the majority of the speakers at the event, the LGBT community and secularists were the primary reasons for the nation’s downward spiral.
But the AFA’s efforts to derail or tarnish SPLC’s work to help educators are more than misleading; they’re ignoble and backwards. The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice have both taken action to make schools more conducive to learning.
In March 2011 at a White House conference addressing bullying, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted that over the course of one month “five young people took their lives after being bullied or harassed for their actual or perceived sexual orientation. It was a moment that reminded all of us that we need to stand up and speak out against intolerance in all its forms. Whenever students are harassing or bullying another student, it’s time for adults and children to step up and shout out: this must stop.”
The AFA, however, is stuck somewhere in the 1950s, when public schools were far more exclusive, unfair and therefore woefully inadequate. And the group wants things to be like they were in a time far harsher, rigid, and oppressively intolerant of other races.
[image via Teaching Tolerance]