No Name-Calling Week

More schools try 'No Name-Calling' [Excerpt]
By DAVID CRARY
Associated Press
Published on: 01/24/05

..."No Name-Calling Week" takes aim at insults of all kinds — whether based on a child's appearance, background or behavior. But a handful of conservative critics have zeroed in on the references to harassment based on sexual orientation.

"I hope schools will realize it's less an exercise in tolerance than a platform for liberal groups to promote their pansexual agenda," said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute.

"Schools should be steering kids away from identifying as gay," Knight said. "You can teach civility to kids and tell them every child is valued without conveying the message that failure to accept homosexuality as normal is a sign of bigotry."

In Iowa, complaints by scores of parents about the gay themes in "The Misfits" prompted the Pleasant Valley school board to rule that teachers no longer could read it aloud to elementary school classes, although it could remain in school libraries...[You don't find out one of the characters is gay until the book is almost done. I would not call that a "theme."]

"People who would criticize this, regardless of who came out with it, are people with bad hearts," said Jerald Newberry, who directs the NEA's health information network.

"This is as vanilla as you get in terms of creating safe environments in schools," Newberry said. "To criticize this program would, almost without exception, be a political attack, not an attack on its content."

James Garbarino, a Cornell University professor who has studied school bullying, said harassment based on sexual orientation "ought to be No. 1 on the list" as educators combat name-calling. Such taunting has led to violence and suicides, he said...
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/0105/24namecalling.html