One week, two boys, many questions

The next person to champion the value of socialization as it's offered in public school ought to be given copies of two news stories reporting on the bullying deaths of children just days apart.

Right here in my own community, Asher Brown, 13, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after kids at his school taunted him mercilessly. His parents say he was bullied to death. He was accused of being gay and was taunted for being Buddhist. His parents claim that they repeatedly reported his predicament to school officials, but nothing changed. Other families have come forward alleging the same. Others have said their kids were bullied, too. One family moved its child to another school where things are better.

Asher took his life Sept. 23.

A few days earlier on September 19, another boy of 13 -- also the victim of bullying at school -- committed suicide by hanging himself in his family's backyard. Seth Walsh of Tehachapi, CA was also accused of being gay though news reports do not confirm his sexual orientation.

Two boys, both so young and with so much potential, decided it was better to DIE than to put up with the hell that accompanied their school experiences.

It was better to die than to go back to school.

In my community, the collective finger of blame has been pointed squarely at the school district for not doing enough to stop the bullying and subsequent suicide of Asher Brown.

I'm not sure this is fair.

While it's true that schools assume a "once your child comes through our doors, he's ours" mentality and should be held accountable for student safety, it's also true that schools and teachers can only do so much extra when confronted with the near-impossible primary task of actually teaching anything to hundreds of kids every day.

Our society warehouses hundreds of kids under one roof for hours on end, day after day, and naively expects public school administrators and teachers to be parents, protectors, educators, and social workers. I don't think this is realistic or appropriate.

Instead of blaming the school district or the schools themselves, I blame the parents -- all of them. Who's parenting the kids who are bullying other people's children? Why didn't they teach them compassion? Right from wrong? The age-old moral imperative to help, not destroy, one another? What about the parents of the kids who stood by and witnessed the torment of Asher and Seth but said nothing? What were those kids taught? That as long as you're not the one being targeted, it shouldn't concern you? That it's better to sacrifice someone else than risk becoming a target yourself? And why do parents who know their children are being repeatedly bullied repeatedly insist on returning those kids to school? Why would you knowingly throw your child back into the mouth of the lion? Transfer them! Homeschool them or find someone else who can! Work the graveyard shift at Walmart and apply for scholarships to put them in private school!

A bad public school does not have to be the only option. It doesn't matter that it's free if it's toxic!

My heart breaks for the mothers of Asher Brown and Seth Walsh. They have lost their sons in the prime of their lives and there is no fix for such grief.

I'm still waiting for the revolution, the one in which parents everywhere take back their kids from the state and its many nanny institutions.

Something tells me I'm going to be waiting a long time.

The hardest thing to teach?

When I first began homeschooling my children, I told myself the biggest hurdles would be teaching them about slavery in America and teaching them about the holocaust of WWII.

All the time I've been weighing my options for broaching these most unpleasant topics -- because, as any of my long-time readers know, I disdain historical revisionism or the selective teaching of only the "good" parts -- I've been unaware of a growing struggle within my own heart and mind.

It has surfaced with the beginning of our new school year and our first forays into the Middle Ages because, as part of their studies, my children will come face to face with the birth and rise of Islam.

Islam. For most of my life it was just a word, a descriptor for an exotic-sounding religion centered in an exotic and far-off part of the world. I knew it existed, just as I knew about Buddhism, animism, and other faith traditions not common to the little slice of south Texas where I grew up, but its existence was nothing that concerned me.

I knew there was a book, the Koran. I knew there was a venerated prophet, Muhammad. I knew there was a city in Saudi Arabia, Mecca.

And those things were all I knew.

See, I went to public school so I never learned about the Crusades or the clashes between Muslims and Jews. My public education did a good job of compartmentalizing those peoples -- Christians in one box, Jews in another, Muslims in yet another, and everyone else lumped together in the "they're small and weird and don't really matter" category.

Life was easy because my thoughts were unencumbered, untroubled by the complicated relationships between groups of people so dedicated to their respective faiths that they warred against each other for control of land they'd all designated as holy.

I never paid attention to the nightly news, nor did I fully understand the analogy between hell freezing over and achieving peace in the Middle East.

In short, my teachers did a damn lousy job of laying out for me the current events of the day -- why WAS it so important for President Carter to meet with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Israel's Menachim Begin? What were the Camp David Accords and why did they matter?

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. I'm sitting in my living room, two months pregnant, wanting to plan a home birth, and waiting to interview my chosen midwife for the first time. My mother is upstairs with my toddler and calls down to me that an airplane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. I'm nonplussed, self-absorbed in my last minute preparations before the midwife arrives. Small planes periodically crash into tall buildings, right? I remark on this to my mother and she replies that this was a passenger jet. My curiosity is piqued, but I'm still focused on my impending visitor. My mother calls down to me again -- this time her voice is tinged with urgency -- to turn on the downstairs television and I do it just in time to see a smoking skyscraper begin to crumble. I begin to read the ticker tape scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen and then I start to shake.

Running upstairs to my mother's room and her much bigger television screen, I ask over and over again, "What is happening? What IS happening? Where is the president? Is this an attack?"

At that point, the media doesn't know where President Bush is and they also don't know how many other planes we can expect to come hurling in like lightning bolts. There is talk of a missing plane. Is it headed for the White House? The Capitol Building? The Washington Monument? Later, of course, we'd learn about the nosedive into the Shanksville, PA field and the bravery of the passengers on that plane.

In the wee hours of that night and the next and the next as I lay awake listening to the radio with its live coverage of rescues and recoveries at Ground Zero, and as I tried to tend to my daughter with one ear while listenening to the talking on the television with the other, I began to learn about Islam and to craft an understanding of it within the context of terror and pain and death.

I kept waiting for American Muslims to take to the streets in loud and forceful denouncement of the 9/11 catastrophe. Where were their voices on talk radio? Why weren't they demanding hours and hours of airtime to distance themselves from the evil that infiltrated our society, lived alongside our citizens, shopped in our stores, ate in our restaurants, drank in our bars (ironic), and attended our schools -- all of it in preparation to attack and kill?

When those voices came few, small, weak and altogether unconvincing, what had begun as a growing uneasiness about Islam grew into a full-blown dislike, and I caught myself by surprise as I struggled to reconcile this anger with what my Christian faith had always taught.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. We are all the children of God.

I don't think I can. I'm not sure this is true.

That's what I told myself back then.

That's what I told myself a couple of months later when I saw a woman shopping at Target dressed in a black burqa from head to toe with only her eyes visible, her children trailing along behind her and her husband leading the parade. Seeing her, seeing that burqa, I felt my face getting hot and my jaw began to clench.

How could I be so angry at a total stranger? How could I be so angry, period?

Nothing has happened in the intervening years to substantially alter my opinion of Islam, although I admit that time has made me more rational when it comes to realizing that just as all Christians shouldn't be painted with the same broad brush, neither should Muslims. There is a difference between regular and radical, but it's hard to remember this sometimes.

I give in to that reality grudgingly, though, and this tells me I'm still conflicted about Islam and its place in my country and in the education of my children.

What to do?

We won't tackle Islam for another couple of weeks, so I have some time to decide whether I want to add books to our home library about the subject or whether I'll just piece together some basic information from internet websites and make handouts for my children's notebooks. They need to know what Islam is, how it was founded, what Muslims believe.

Can I remain neutral as I share this information with them? Should I?

I'll let you know what happens.

Stop. The. Madness. Just. Stop.

The news out from the train wreck that far too often passes for public education seems to come in waves, have you noticed?

First, we've got Christian students in Roswell, NM being punished for giving donuts to their teachers that included Bible verses.

Now, we've got a group of Massachusetts middle school kids who took a field trip to a mosque and ended up participating in Muslim prayers to Allah. They were supposed to be learning about the architecture and were going to observe a prayer service.

Instead, the students ended up getting a lecture on the prophet Muhammad and some of the boys participated in a midday prayer.

Bet the parents of any Jewish, Christian, atheist, or other non-Muslim kids loved this.

I know I would have. (Snark)

"You have to believe in Allah, and Allah is the one God," the students were told. A parent on the field trip caught the whole thing on videotape. At no point did any school official intervene in either the lecture or the praying. One has to wonder what would have happened had no parents been on the trip to report the truth.

Girls on the field trip were also told that Islam is pro-women. That's fine if you don't bother to share with them the recent story out of Iran, the one about Shakineh Ashtiani who's been on Iranian death row since 2006. She's the mother of two who's already been flogged and may still be stoned unless human rights activists can convince the Iranian government her sentence is overly harsh. Even if she ends up not being stoned, she'll likely be hanged. See, she's been accused of killing her husband and having an illicit relationship with another man, but neither charge has been proven. She's a woman, so that's all the evidence they need.

But I digress.

The field trip is part of a course in which students will visit a mosque, a synagogue, and meet with representatives of the Hindu religion. In a token gesture of inclusiveness, they'll get to hear a Christian gospel concert. Guess school officials think a few gospel songs will give kids a sufficient understanding of Christianity.

The school has apologized to parents for the mosque mishap, which is good. But what I don't understand is that why, after all the controversy surrounding religion in schools (not to mention the Ground Zero mosque flap), this school decided it could present such a course without getting itself in trouble. Smart much?

Kids in Massachusetts, like kids everywhere being educated on the taxpayer dime, have no business spending precious school hours in a mosque or any other house of worship. If we're going to keep Christmas trees and music and Stars of David and menorahs out of public schools, we need to keep ALL religious experiences out of public schools and all public schools out of religious experiences.

Can I hear everybody say, "Amen"?

Roswell principal nails Christian students for delivering donuts

Christianity -- apparently more vile and obscene than pretty much anything else public schools have to offer -- is once again on the front burner, this time in Roswell, New Mexico.

A school principal has disciplined a group of unabashedly Christian students for daring to drive over into Texas on their own time to buy Krispy Kreme donuts to give to their teachers as a way of saying thanks.

I know, it's horrible. Read on if you can.

The students had the audacity to include little slips of paper with Bible verses on them.

According to Liberty Counsel, a non-profit litigation, education, and public policy group with an interest in protecting religious liberties, some of students drove six hours round-trip to get the donuts, a treat that isn't available in Roswell. The students belong to a group called Relentless in Roswell.

"Since the closest Krispy Kreme shop was in Texas, some of the group drove almost six hours round trip, stayed overnight, got up at 3:00 a.m., filled their car's back seat with fresh doughnuts and got back to school on time to deliver the doughnuts," Liberty Counsel explained.

Shocking.

Their principal's reaction? According to Liberty Counsel, he was quoted as saying, "I don't like Christians. All they do is smile at you and stab you in the back."

Remember, dear readers, this man gets his salary from New Mexico taxpayers. They are trusting him to educate their children.

That's the most shocking of all.

Mosque, yes. Satirical cartoon? Not so much

It's the height of irony, the news today that a Seattle cartoonist has taken the advice of the FBI and gone underground, moving house and changing her identity all because she took up where Comedy Central left off when it decided to censor an episode of South Park that was supposed to include the character of Muslim prophet Muhammad.

According to Islamic tradition, it is blasphemous to reproduce the likenesses of its prophets.

Bowing to threats, the show's producers decided to cut out the part about Muhammad rather than risk being blown to kingdom come.

As a member of the journalism community, Molly Norris was apparently pretty ticked that any media outlet would censor itself rather than take the heat that often comes with upholding the First Amendment.

Ms. Norris took up the challenge and suggested that May 20, 2010 should be declared "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." Facebook pages in support of Norris' idea soon popped up like weeds after a warm spring rain, so much so that the Pakistani government temporarily banned the social networking site from being available to its citizens.

In hindsight, Norris said she never officially declared such a day but that her tongue-in-cheek remark went viral and got away from her.

In a digital age where information and images can circle the globe in a matter of minutes, I don't think she should have been that surprised. I also don't think she should have backpedaled and apologized profusely for her so-called transgression, but she did.

The apology wasn't enough, of course, and Ms. Norris' name was added to a hit list at the behest of U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

There are death threats and then there are death threats. What put Ms. Norris' case on the FBI's radar hasn't been publicized, but the bureau advised her the threat was serious enough that she should take extreme measures to protect herself. We can speculate about why they didn't offer to do this for her.

So while a handful of Muslim activists and pansy-assed politicians were shrilly proclaiming the right to build a mosque a stone's throw from Ground Zero, an American citizen and journalist was disconnecting herself from everything that used to be her life -- her name, her home, her friends, her job, her past.

Radical Islam set out to erase Molly Norris, and it succeeded.

Now I'm wondering where our president is. Where is his speech in which he vigorously asserts the rights of American journalists to publish freely their opinions and ideas in the pages of American newspapers? It's not to be found alongside the speech in which he boldly declared the rights of American and foreign-born Muslims to build a mosque near the site where radical Islam slaughtered 2,000 + people one bright blue day in September. I'm guessing it's not a draft on his secretary's computer waiting to be edited, either.

Odds are that such a speech will never be found because it will never be written.

Where is the FBI? The CIA? Isn't there anyone who can protect poor Ms. Norris from Islamic wingnuts both foreign and domestic?

Some are already asking whether there's any difference between asserting the freedom of religion in the mosque case and asserting freedom of speech in the Norris case. After all, if the mosque builders get short shrift, isn't it only fair for Molly Norris to sacrifice something, too?

No one has said the mosque can't or shouldn't be built, just that out of respect for 9/11 victims and survivors it should be located elsewhere. No one has said Muslims can't or shouldn't worship as they see fit. Where's the infringement on the freedom of religion? What's more, if the mosque does end up near Ground Zero then those who oppose its location will have to swallow the bitter pill and go on. The mosque and its legitimate congregants will be constitutionally protected and no one in an official capacity will ever say them nay.

Ms. Norris, on the other hand, was a newspaper cartoonist who made a personal remark that took on a life of its own. In trying to defend Comedy Central, she herself was threatened with violence and has since shut up, too. When fear or intimidation are used to silence someone, this IS an infringement on their freedom of speech. In spite of her mea culpas, though, Ms. Norris doesn't get to go on, not as she was anyway. She has to start over. The Constitution has apparently been suspended and our government is complicit.

See the difference now?

As a former journalist, my heart breaks for Molly Norris. What has happened to her should chill the spirit of every single American. She may be the first journalist to suffer this grotesque fate at the hands of a government that won't protect its citizens and their rights, but something tells me she won't be the last.

RIP Molly Norris.

Burning question on the eve of 9/11

Knowing my strong opinions on the events in the aftermath of 9/11 including the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, several people have asked me what I think about the Florida pastor who's been threatening for the past two weeks to burn copies of the Koran tomorrow.

I understand his anger. I sympathize with his obviously visceral reaction to the possibility of Muslim worshipers observing Islamic traditions near the place where so many innocents died one tragic morning nine years ago. I, too, fight the temptation to brand all Muslims as terrorist wannabes or, at the very least, sympathizers.

But I can't condone or agree with his decision to set another religion's holy book on fire.

True, Muslims have burned the Christian Bible. They've burned the Jewish Tanakh. When they do these things, civilized people revile them and call them hateful. If that Florida preacher burns the Koran, he will be no better.

Book burning is just wrong. It smacks of Stalinist Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Mao's China.

It's what people do when they want to stamp out thoughts and ideas they find too threatening to deal with. It's what the Muslims in some places do out of vitriolic hatred for Christians and Jews. It's what ignorant people of all faiths do when they can't think of anything more intelligent.

If we're going to be so threatened by what the Koran represents, how will we ever summon the courage to go up against the elements of Islam that resulted in that horrific September day?

Burning all the Korans in the world will not make radical Islam go away. If anything, it will throw fuel on a fire that we're neither physically nor spiritually prepared to douse.


The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners and intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights. The death toll of the attacks was 2,996, including the 19 hijackers. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries.

Because Stephen Hawking says so?

The noted British scientist Stephen Hawking, arguably the smartest man living today, has left me baffled and not a little peeved.

In advance of his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking is now quoted by the Associated Press as saying God did not create the universe and that the Big Bang is completely logical as a starting point for everything in existence. A new set of theories makes a creator of the universe redundant, he says:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

So, um, where did the law of gravity come from? And how exactly is it again that something can come out of nothing? How does nothing have enough substance innately to generate something? And how does gravity exclusive of any other contributor or contributing factor take nothing and form it into something? And how is it that mere human theory -- by its very nature apt to change and morph -- can be deemed the final word?

Far be it from me, a lowly homeschooling mother of four with a bachelor's degree in, of all things pedestrian, journalism to go up against someone like Mr. Hawking. I'd never want to pick a fight with a mind like that. And, yes, I know that our country's president during his campaign duly noted the pathetic among us who prefer to "cling" to our guns and our religion. Yes, yes, I'm among the pathetic who, while I don't work a firearm, do tend to turn towards a higher power for answers, help, and reassurance. I'm pathetic in this sense and I'm fine with it.

But e'en in my humble circumstances, steeped as I am in my Christian mythology so-called, I do wonder about the aforementioned questions and whether they are answered in his book.


"For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." 2 Peter 2:1

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." 1 John 4:1