Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

For 11 years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has organized “Mix It Up Lunch” day to promote kids meeting and spending time with a child they did not know, a child who isn’t  in their clique perhaps.

Big shocker that the American Family Association is taking an opportunity to smack the SPLC – which recently labeled the AFA as a hate group – by distorting this simple exercise in civility into a gay agenda item.

200 schools have cancelled. Only one would speak to the New York Times and claimed teachers had to focus on academics.

But in Pennsylvania, one school remains steadfast. 

Although parents did complain to Kevin Brady, the head of the Avon Grove Charter School in rural Pennsylvania, the school is still planning to hold Mix it Up at Lunch Day for its 1,600 students.

Students will each be assigned a number and then paired up by school officials. The school has a large population of special needs students who can feel isolated and thus benefit greatly from the program, Mr. Brady said.

The school started it a few years ago, inspired, in part, by the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and examples of bully-related violence that surfaced in schools around the country.

He said the e-mail sent by the association described a program that had “absolutely no resemblance to what we do.” Once parents understood how the program worked, they decided not keep their children home that day, he said.

“I think they feel they have been taken for a bit of a ride,” he said.

Kudos to Kevin Brady and the Avon Grove Charter School for not allowing a political agenda to interfere with a proven technique to address bullying.