Remember the playground bully at your school? Every school had at least one. Usually it was an older boy who used both physical and verbal means to scare everybody into doing what he wanted. Seems to me that we all figured out how to deal with this guy—and by all, I mean the kids, the parents, the teachers and the administration. After all, schoolyard, or school hallway bullies aren’t new; they’re an ages-old problem, unfortunately. However, I don’t recall that we ever had to have a state law telling us we had to take care of this guy—or defining what he was doing, or demanding that we highlight his actions, or anything else.

That’s not the case today, however. Here in Wisconsin and in a number of other states, bullying bills are becoming quite popular. I don’t think we can ignore the timing on this. As the “safe schools” mantra gains momentum and as tolerance and diversity, in particular for students who say they are homosexuals, become the hallmarks of our schools, we hear more and more about bullying, sometimes with specific groups being singled out for special attention.

Here in Wisconsin, during the last state legislative session we were tracking a bill that would have directed Wisconsin’s public schools to develop a policy that would define bullying, prohibit pupils from bullying and provide penalties for bullying. The Department of Public Instruction was directed to draft a model bullying policy. The bill left the definition of bullying up to the school district or the Department of Public Instruction, but mandated that it included harassment and intimidation.

We opposed the bill then, primarily because we thought it was unnecessary. Most school districts already have policies to handle school bullies. We also opposed the bill because we want to be sure no one group of students gets special protection or recognition. In addition, we thought harassment and intimidation were very vague and could lead to a situation where one student is telling another student he or she disagrees with him and before you know it, the one student will claim he or she is being intimidated or harassed, simply because another student disagrees with him.

In some states, the bullying law creates a situation that whereas before these laws, your schoolyard bully might be the kid beating up other kids and taking their lunch money, if such a law were enacted, your new bully could be the Christian student who says that homosexuality is wrong.

Well, the bullying legislation of 2005 did not make it out of the state legislature and thus, did not become law. However, the bill has resurfaced in the current legislative session, and we are keeping an eye on its progress. Overall, the two bills are similar. This year’s version has a few modifications, but the changes don’t make it substantially different from the previous bill. The biggest change in the new legislation is that the requirement for the definition of bullying to include “harassment and intimidation” was removed. Other than a few other minor changes, the bill is essentially the same as the earlier version.

A new wrinkle surfaced the other day. We discovered that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has already done everything the proposed legislation requires. This goes to show you how unnecessary the bill actually is.

In fact DPI has been working on their bullying guidelines since the previous bill failed to make it into law. They put together a work group in the fall of 2006 to draft their model bullying policy. The group included DPI personnel and representatives from several educational and administrative organizations. However, from what we can tell, only one student group was represented during the formation of the policy, and that was, interestingly, the Gay-Straight Alliance for Safe Schools.

Friends, this is a perfect example of unnecessary—and potentially dangerous— legislation. Not only are there plenty of resources and tools available to teachers and school administrators to deal with bullies, but the effects of any sexual preference protections could leave Christian students in state-enforced silence. Now, I will be the first one to condemn the actions of bullies, and indeed, our children need a safe environment in which to grow and learn, but this unnecessary legislation could be a Trojan horse, used more to bring in affirmation of and additional protections for select groups of students, than it is anything else. Perhaps the take-away lesson is that we must not be bullied by our own state legislature.

For Wisconsin Family Council, I’m Julaine Appling reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”