Mid-Week Post

This is the American electorate's only presidential hope.



(with thanks)



Because he's Mark Steyn:

These days, a Thrashing Schools Act mandating Thrashing Out Differences groups across the province would be the biggest windfall for Chief Commissar Barbara Hall and her Ontario “Human Rights” Commission since the transsexual labiaplasty case went belly up. Teachers are not permitted, in any meaningful sense, to deal with the problem of bullying. And, when you can’t deal with a problem, the easiest option is to institutionalize it. Thus, today is the Day of Pink, “the international day against bullying, discrimination, homophobia and transphobia.” Don’t know how big it is in Yemen or Waziristan, but the Minister of Education for the Northwest Territories is on board, and the Ontario MPP Peggy Nash has issued her own video greeting for the day, just like the Queen’s Christmas message: “Today’s the day we can unite in celebrating diversity and in raising awareness …”

So it’s just like every other bloody boring day in the Ontario school system then?

Meanwhile, Cable 14 in Hamilton, Ont., has been Tweeting up a storm: “National Day of Pink/Anti-Bullying Day is tomorrow. What will you be wearing?” Er, I don’t think I have a lot of choice on that front, do I? “For schools holding Anti-Bullying events in April, you still have time to order shirts at a discount.”

That’s great news! Nothing says “celebrate diversity” like forcing everyone to dress exactly the same, like a bunch of Maoists who threw their workers’ garb in the washer but forgot to take the red flag out. If you’re thinking, “Hang on. Day of Pink? Didn’t we just have that?” No, that was Pink Shirt Day, the last Wednesday in February. This is Day of Pink, second Wednesday in April. Like the King streetcar, there’ll be another one along in a minute, enthusiastically sponsored by Scotiabank, Royal Bank, ViaRail and all the other corporate bigwigs.

If you’re thinking, “Hang on. Pink awareness-raising? Isn’t that something to do with breast cancer?” No, that’s pink ribbons. Unfortunately, all the hues for awareness-raising ribbons are taken: not just white for bone cancer and yellow for adenosarcoma, but also (my current favourite) periwinkle for acid reflux. We need to raise awareness of how all the awareness-raising ribbons have been taken, so anti-bullying groups have been obliged to move on from ribbons to shirts....

According to the Toronto District School Board’s own survey, the most common type of bullying is for “body image” — the reason given by 27% of high school students, 38% of Grades 7 and 8, and yea, back through the generations. Yet there are no proposals for mandatory Fat-Svelte Alliances, or Homely-Smokin’ Alliances. The second biggest reason in Toronto schools is “cultural or racial background.” “Cultural,” eh? Yet there seems no urge to install Infidel-Believer Alliances in Valley Park Middle School’s celebrated mosqueteria, although they could probably fit it in the back behind the menstruating girls. So the pressure for GSAs in every school would seem to be a solution entirely unrelated to the problem. Indeed, it would seem to be a gay hijacking of the issue. Queer Eye For The Fat Chick: “But enough about you, let’s talk about me.”

What about if you’re the last non-sexualized tween schoolgirl in Ontario? You’re still into ponies and unicorns and have no great interest in the opposite sex except when nice Prince William visits to cut the ribbon at the new Transgendered Studies Department. What if the other girls are beginning to mock you for wanting to see Anne Of Green Gables instead of Anne Does Avonlea? Is there any room for the sexual-developmentally challenged in the GSAs?

Why, of course! GSAs are officially welcoming of gays, straights, and even those freaky weirdy types who aren’t yet into sexual identity but could use a helpful nudge in the right direction. “Advisors Say GSA Also For Straight Students,” as the headline to a poignant story in yesterday’s edition of the Pembroke Academy newspaper in New Hampshire puts it. The school-approved GSA began five years ago with an ambitious platform of exciting gay activities. “They had plans for group events, like bake sales and car washes, but they never came to pass,” explained Ms Yackanin, the social studies teacher who served as the GSA’s first advisor.

From a lack of gay bake sales and gay car washes, the GSA has now advanced to a lack of gays. “The students just stopped coming,” said Mrs McCrum, the new Spanish teacher who took over the GSA at the start of this school year. This is the homophobic reality of our education system: a school gay group that has everything it needs except gays. Mrs Yackanin is reported by the Pembroke Academy paper as “saying to heterosexuals that the GSA is a resource for the entire school community.” C’mon, you guys, what’s wrong with you? No penetrative sex with other boys is required, or even heavy petting. It’s all about getting together in the old school spirit and organizing a gay car wash.

And now the model that has proved so successful at Pembroke Academy will be enthralling school-children from Thunder Bay to Moosonee. In Thomas Arnold’s day, the object was to punish bullies, and teach their victims to stand up to them. Now a defensive and enfeebled educational establishment lets the bullies get on with it, and Dalton McGuinty’s ministry has decided everyone else should be taught how to be victims — or, at any rate, members of approved victimological identity groups. Gays? Sure. Muslims? You betcha. Gay Muslims? We’ll cross that Rainbow Bridge when we get to it. For the moment, let’s stay focused: Bullying is merely the sharp end of “heterosexism,” as the Ontario “Human Rights” Commission calls it. Chief Commissar Hall defines heterosexism as “the assumption that heterosexuality is superior and preferable,” which will come as news to anyone who’s had sex with me.

When you shrink from punishing the bullies (as our schools do), when you pursue phantom enemies (as our “human rights” nomenklatura do), when you use the victims as a pretext for ideological advancement (as the Ontario government is doing), all that’s left is the creepy, soft totalitarian, collectivized, state-enforced, glassy-eyed homogeneity of “uniting to celebrate diversity” (in Peggy Nash’s words). So Canada will have GSAs from Niagara to Nunavut; and for the lonely and unsocial, the lumpy and awkward, real bullying will proceed undisturbed in the shadows; and ideologically-compliant faux-bullying will explode, as a generation of children is conscripted into a youth corps of eternal victimhood, alert to every slight, however footling. In New York, where children are bullied with gay abandon, the school board recently proposed banning from its tests 50 hurtful, discriminatory words such as “religious holidays,” “birthdays” and “cigarettes.” From such an environment come a cowed, pliant herd and a cadre of professional grievance-mongers, but not a lot of functioning, freeborn citizens.

“Awareness-raising”? I think we need to raise awareness that, unless you’ve got the T-shirt concession, all these Pink Days are worthless crap that do nothing for the problem they claim to be addressing. If you’ve chanced to see me in person, you’ll know I often wear a pink shirt (I may even wear one on stage in Toronto later this month). Like the country song says, “I Was Pink Shirt When Pink Shirt Wasn’t Cool — Er, Mandatory.” But, on Pink Shirt Day, I would wear mauve or turquoise or chartreuse or anything but pink, because, when the state is committed to coercing a ruthless conformity, that’s the time to show that a flickering flame of the contrarian, iconoclastic spirit still flickers in the Canadian schoolhouse. You may get bullied for not wearing pink on the Day of Pink, but you’ll feel better for it.

Why should I have to wear a pink shirt? I'm not one of the herd.

Oh, the rightness of it all.....



First, this was never about bullying.  Parents and teachers, and ultimately the students, should be able to tackle that particular problem without it exploding into a huge social phenomenon. Bullying was the wedge a perverted special-interest group used to worm its way into schools.



Secondly, doesn't anyone find this group-think disturbing? It smacks of the Cultural Revolution or North Korean Kim-deist worship. Surely someone in the school system would start raising some red flags.



Thirdly, thank GOD someone else has pointed out how ridiculous these awareness ribbons/pins/t-shirts are. Yes, I'm aware that there are problems in the world. These cause-of-the-month symbols are helpful how?



As an Israeli carpenter once said:

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
 

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

And finally, if these allegedly Catholic schools wish to have both gay groups AND funding, blitz these sparsely attended clubs with as many un-gay students as you can find. Who are these so-called paragons of tolerance to decry the gay/straight ratio of clubs they bullied others into having?



Let the drug injection sites be in the arts and entertainment districts where the champagne socialists and tourists congregate. Let citizens and visitors alike watch junkies OD and bleed out. Come on, specialists. Where's your conviction?



And now, a baby hippo discovering the joys of a good swim.