Family Leader's bullying lesson

Witnessing the Family Leader's long, slow free-fall to irrelevance is like watching a car careen off a cliff in slow motion.

The damage is done, the trajectory is set. There's nothing to do but cringe and brace yourself for the inevitable fiery crash.

The Leader's seemingly unending quest to alienate Iowa's reasonable majority stands in especially stark contrast to other groups' current efforts to increase tolerance and promote civil rights for all Iowans.

Take, for example, One Iowa's coffee klatsch campaign to humanize same-sex marriage and gay rights issues for Iowans who are on the fence by introducing them to gay friends and neighbors whose lives are measurably better because of moves toward equality.

Meanwhile, the Bob Vander Plaats vehicle is picking a fight with an anti-bullying conference whose controversial platform is that all students deserve to feel safe and supported in school.

It's almost sad to watch the group have to contort itself into increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions to keep mining the outrage that has fueled the Family Leader leader's lukewarm success.

This time, they are railing against the Iowa Governors Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth, trying to spin the conference's anti-bullying agenda into a salacious pro-gay conspiracy. They called on Gov. Terry Branstad to ask Iowa Safe Schools, which organizes the conference, to remove the word “Governor” from the event's name. Branstad, rightly, brushed off the group's request.

That wasn't enough for Vander Plaats' crowd, which took its fight to We the People, asking on its website if we approve of “a conference that supports immoral, premarital sexual behavior among Iowa students,” or the governor “lending his title” to such an abomination.

Gross mischaracterization aside, my guess is that most people's answer would be: yawn.

For years now, the Family Leader has been trying to tell us our culture is on fire. You can't blame us for being a little tired of the alarms. The fact is, junior high and high school are no picnic for kids who are different. Bullying isn't a problem we can afford to take lightly, or that groups should irresponsibly pervert to try to convert it into political hay.

Branstad apparently knows the first rule about dealing with bullies: They wilt when you don't give them the attention they crave.

And it seems to me that Iowans are becoming equally wise to the Family Leader's bullying ways.

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jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net