Michigans new "Anti-Bullying" Law

So the "Social Conservatives" in Michigan decided it would be a good idea to pass an Anti-Bullying law. They even named it: "Matt's Safe School Law" after Matt Epling a student that killed himself after enduring years of bullying. On it's face this sounds great right? Michigan is finally catching up with the rest of the country and looking to stop bullying in it's schools and institutions right?

--Wrong--

Michigan is ONLY looking to stop bullying if you happen to bully someone of Christian belief. Yes, that's right. I was baffled when I read this. This law actually PROTECTS bullies from prosecution if they are bullying someone out of a "sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction". No that isn't a typo, if you feel that you are morally justified in bullying someone, you WILL NOT be held accountable for those actions in Michigan.

This law also has the following provisions; it does NOT require School Districts to report incidents of bullying, no provisions for enforcement of the law, no teacher training and it does NOT hold adminstrators of the schools accountable if the fail to act on any reports of bullying. It does NOT list any groups as protected OTHER THAN Christians, whose "personally held religious beliefs protect them". -- The Republicans logic for this is this "Religious Freedom".

On the Senate floor, this was ACTUALLY STATED on the record: "bullying kids is okay if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.” Then these same politicians go on to say: "The special protections for gay and transgendered teachers will make it extremely difficult for [public school] districts that might want to remove them from the classroom."

In other words, these religious right nut-jobs believe that efforts to protect gays, atheists, and non-christians from assault and discrimination and bullying impinge on their "religious freedoms" to express and act on their belief that the beliefs of others (orientation or otherwise) is an abomination. --SICK.

This belief relies on a twisted sense of religious liberty. Freedom of religious expression does NOT extend to kicking the crap out of someone because their beliefs or orientation do not happen to agree with YOUR religious beliefs. It does not give someone the right to fire an employee because they don't share your views on religion or sexuality.

I wonder, would these same people trumpeting the banner of "religious freedom" would feel the same way about their rhetoric if a muslim student beat the crap out of a christian student because he felt that the christian student were an Infidel? I doubt it, they would be APALLED!

Makes me want to be a Christian, I can bully people, discriminate at will and have NO consequence whatsoever as long as I "claim" that it's a religious reason. No, I can't do that. There is NEVER a good reason to do those things based on someones beliefs, orientation, skin color etc.

If there was a Jesus I would guess based on the philosophies espoused in the Bible, he would have been disgusted by the whole idea of protecting one group of people from accountability based solely on Religion.