A response to novelist Silas House on the faux "bullying bill"

Novelist Silas House complains about legislators on a State House committee who voted down the so-called "bullying bill" (HB 336) on the grounds that the bullying law passed in 2008 already protects all students.

House says the “logic” of these legislators "falls short." Laws that protect everyone, he argues, don't protect everyone and so what we need to do is to specify who everyone is. Only then will everyone be protected.

Apparently it's just too hard for our school officials to figure out who "everyone" is.

In reality, HB 336 was a cynical attempt by a political group to use the tragedies of several students to promote their own political agenda. If groups like the Fairness Campaign want to pursue laws that benefit their constituency, they should do it with a law that’s properly labeled, not one that masquerades as something that it isn’t.

If current laws that already prohibit bulling aren’t enough, then why is one gay rights group going to schools around the state saying that current laws are enough to deal with this problem and asking schools to do so?

The chairman of the House committee refused to hear testimony from opponents of the bill and after it was voted down anyway, the leader of the Fairness Campaign made a spectacle of himself in the Capitol Annex hallway by engaging in the same threatening and intimidating behavior the bill he was supporting prohibits.

But maybe House didn’t know about these things, since the CJ didn’t report them.

Should we specify who should be protected from murder and stealing by listing all the different types of people who shouldn’t be murdered and stolen from?

That may make logical sense to House, but to us it clearly “falls short.”

Gay rights leader's rampage ignore by state's two biggest papers

The most prominent gay rights leader in the state goes berserk in a Capitol Annex hallway after a so-called "Bullying Bill" goes down to defeat after it was exposed as an attempt to write gay rights language into school law and what does the Louisville Courier-Journal do?

Runs a cartoon showing conservative Republicans going berserk.

In fact, the account of the Fairness Campaign's Chris Hartman hallway rampage went entirely unreported in the CJ's print edition. And the Lexington Herald-Leader? They just pretended it didn't happen at all.

So kudos to the Frankfort State-Journal, which apparently doesn't censor news. It not only mentioned it, but put it on their front page, as well as the AP, which even ran a picture of Hartman in mid-convulsion.

KY gay rights group says current bullying law is sufficient

Wait a minute. Remember how we were told only yesterday by advocates of HB 336, the so-called "Bullying Bill" that is really a gay rights bill, that the 2008 bullying law wasn't enough to deal with bullying in schools?

Well, apparently the Kentucky Equality Federation, a gay rights group, didn't get that memo.

The group is going after several schools it says have not dealt adequately with bullying at their schools. What is the problem? According to Jordan Palmer, the group's president, the school are paying attention to current law:

"Kentucky Equality Federation has received multiple reports from each school," said Kentucky Equality Federation President Jordan Palmer. "The problem is the lack of enforcement and an lack of understanding of existing Kentucky school bullying laws."

Did we hear that right? Did Palmer really say exactly what opponents of HB 336 said yesterday in the House Education Committee where the bill went down in defeat? Let's see if we can get some clarification:

The National Bully Police gives the Commonwealth's anti-bullying laws an A++ Rating. House Bill 91 was proposed in 2008 and passed by the Kentucky House of Representatives. The Senate passed it, and it was signed into law by The Honorable Steve Beshear, governor of the commonwealth, on April 15, 2008. The law is commonly referred to as “The Golden Rule Act.”

Whoah. Palmer must be reading Family Foundation talking points. If we didn't know better, we would say that these people really didn't think we needed another bullying law like HB 336. I wonder what other members of this gay rights group say:

“It does absolutely no good to pass new legislation when existing legislation isn’t being enforced or education officials have no knowledge of the law,” stated Kentucky Equality Federation Vice President of Policy & Public Relations, Joshua Koch.

Omigosh.

Of course, this is the same group that screamed bloody murder when a Jackson County high schooler claimed she was a victim of a hate crime when it turned it was only a prank that she herself was in on. Basically everyone (including the county prosecutor) has said that this was not a hate crime, but the Kentucky Equality Federation still lists it as one.

But if these new allegations are true, my suggestion is to send Chris Hartman of the Fairness Campaign in to crack some heads.

Do we need an anti-queening law in Kentucky?

Over at Front Page Kentucky, Jake is recovering from his bout of political sobriety (in which state he opposed expanded gambling legislation) and we now have the first sign that he is back to his old self. We were beginning to worry about him, but now we feel much better.

He runs an excerpt from the Family Foundation press release yesterday in which I gave a blow-by-blow report of Fairness Campaign director Chris Hartman's meltdown after his "gay rights in schools" bill went down to defeat. After spending weeks lecturing other people on how we need to have another law (we already have one) prohibiting threatening and intimidating behavior in schools, Hartman walks out into the hall and starts ranting and raving in front of a whole crowd of people (media included), stalking around yelling and cornering people and screaming in their face.

If anyone is trying to figure out what to get Chris Hartman for his next birthday, may we suggest a straightjacket?

But no problem, says Jake. It was just an "instance of queening." Oh. Okay. We get it now. We're glad Jake explained it to us: This is just how gays act.

We thought the problem was straight-on-gay violence? And Jake is now saying this kind of out of control behavior is just typical of gays? So maybe this bullying bill is going in the complete opposite direction we need to be going.

If we follow Jake's reasoning, then what we really need is an anti-queening law. It could be called the "Chris Hartman Act."

The KY Fairness Campaign is against bullying. Except when THEY do it

Anti-bullying rules for thee, but not for me.

After verbally and physically harassing Family Foundation policy analyst Andrew Walker in the hallway after the "Bullying Bill" (HB 336) went down to defeat in a State House committee, Chris Hartman, director of the Fairness Campaign denied it in today's Louisville Courier-Journal:

Hartman acknowledged that he was angry and confronted Walker after the meeting. But he said that his actions didn’t rise to the level of verbal or physical abuse and that he reconciled with Walker in a hug a few moments later.

Hartman engaged in the very behavior his groups says constitutes bullying in schools. But when he does it, it's not bullying. And after denying that's what he did (in plain sight of a whole crowd of people and causing a State Policeman to start making his way through the hallway to deal with it), Hartman went on to say the charge was a "distortion":

This sort of distortion of events is a perfect example of the type of tactics that were used to kill this bill,” he said.

Umhmm.

Maybe we need an amendment to the "Bullying Bill" that allows children to avoid charges that they were bullying if they hug the people they were bullying after they've done it.

Bullying Bill supporter harasses opponent in Capitol Annex hallway

For Immediate Release
March 13, 2012

LEXINGTON, KY—The leading supporter of the so-called "Bullying Bill" became verbally and physically abusive in a Capitol Annex hallway with an opponent of the bill after the bill went down to defeat in a House committee, attracting the attention of State Police and other observers. The Family Foundation called on the Fairness Campaign to issue a public apology for the behavior of its director, Chris Hartman.

"If you are really opposed to bullying, the last thing you probably want to do is engage in it in plain sight after a meeting in which a bill prohibiting it was just discussed," said Family Foundation spokesman Martin Cothran.

Hartman obstructed the path of Andrew Walker, who had lobbied the committee against the bill, harassing him as he was leaving the restroom after the meeting and began interrogating him in an intimidating way. Several minutes later, Hartman cornered Walker again and began verbally bullying him with charges of being opposed to student safety. After Walker and Alliance Defense Fund attorney Bryan Beauman began leaving to avoid the confrontation, Hartman began yelling threateningly to reporters and others standing in the hallway about his disenchantment with opponents of the "Bullying Bill." "If you want to know who killed this bill, there he is," he said, pointing to Walker.

The incident occurred in front of the press and others who had just left the committee meeting. A state policeman began moving toward Hartman, but backed off when Walker began to leave. "These actions were all things that, had they occurred in a school, would have constituted bullying under the present school safety laws," said Cothran. "It is just bizarre to see proponents of so-called bullying legislation using bullying tactics themselves in plain sight."

Cothran said his group was looking into the possibility of filing a formal complaint over the incident.

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