PSA: Anoka-Hennepin School District and the Victims of the Politics of Hate

Things don't often get very political around here, although it's doubtful any of the regular readers here couldn't surmise my leanings.

Today is an exception.

Justin Aaberg, Anoka victim of gay bullying who hanged himself in 2010

In the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone, there is a devastating story about an epidemic of pre-teen and teen suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, which includes the high school from which Michele Bachmann graduated. While Bachmann doesn't currently live within the school district, it is located in Minnesota's Fighting Sixth which she represents, and the spate of suicides is largely tied to the district's policies* in regards to dealing with homosexual students, or rather refusing to deal with them.

*These policies are largely driven by people involved with the Minnesota Family Council, whose president blogged that one of the victims of unchecked bullying who committed suicide had only one root cause to which blame could be lain: his gayness. One of their researchers, Barb Anderson, was the woman who co-authored the Anoka-Hennepin School District's "No Homo Promo" policy. The MFC also has ties to Bachmann, who has been a keynote speaker at their dinners alongside Newt Gingrich. 

The story is horrifying and is endemic of a much larger issue with the religious right and their perversion of Christ's message to forward a rhetorical and political platform of hate and intolerance, which flies in the face of everything the Messiah whose name they so love to invoke actually stood for, namely love. The politics of hate have real, innocent victims.

Regardless of your beliefs, read this story. A little empathy can go a long ways.

Stop preaching hate.