ryanwalka:

thedailywhat:

License To Bully of the Day: A controversial bill aimed at providing schools with additional tools to fight bullying passed this week in the Michigan Senate, despite being opposed by all 11 Democrats and the father of the boy who inspired the legislation.

A last-minute addition to “Matt’s Safe School Law” protects “sincerely held” religious beliefs or moral convictions from being considered bullying. Critics feel the language will give anti-gay bullies a “license to bully” by providing an exception. ”This is just unconscionable,” said Matt’s father, Kevin Epling of East Lansing. “This is government-sanctioned bigotry.”

Matt Epling committed suicide in 2002 as a result of unbearable torment he received at the hands of bullies.

In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer chastised her colleague for approving the legislation. “There are at least 10 Michigan children in the past decade whose deaths are directly attributable to bullying,” she told Senate Republicans. “But had this bill that you’re gonna pass today been law in effect while they were alive, how many of their deaths would have been prevented? Zero.”

“This bill may not be perfect, but it certainly gets us on the road to making sure that local communities pay attention to this problem and put a policy in place,” said Republican state Sen. Rick Jones, the bill’s sponsor. Jones told the Lansing State Journal “he could have done without that language,” but said it was necessary ” to make sure First Amendment rights weren’t being violated.”

Equality Michigan has launched a petition aimed at convincing the Michigan House of Representatives to reject the Senate’s version of the bill.

[freep / lsj / messenger.]

Figures the state I live in would pass a bill as ridiculous as this…I hate Michigan sometimes.

I knew this piece of trash was going to pass. It’s so fucked up, the whole point of this bill is so that people can force others who don’t agree with or follow their religious beliefs to either fall in line with them, face ridicule and in some instances die, essentially. It’s amazing that the idea that holding a certain belief allows you to do whatever you damn well please to someone else. I think I’m gonna go become a satanist and bully kids who aren’t satanist simply to prove how idiotic this bill is but it’s not fucking worth it, nobody would even realize I was making a point, people never learn, the ignorant stay ignorant and I get more and more ill.  

∞Posted on November 8, 2011

Reblogged from: Always Running, Never Looking Back

Source: thedailywhat

Notes: 770 notes

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