A recent Anti-Abuse law, better known as the Anti-Bullying law, failed because a religious group felt it was their legal and moral Right to verbally, mentally, physically, and/or sexually abuse children based on their sexuality. The law contained general references to groups that could become victims of abuse in school. Some of the general references were race, gender, sexual orientation, physcial characteristics, and others. But the religious hate group claimed it violated their Freedom of Speech by denying them the Right to abuse children based on sexuality. And unfortunately, there were many politicians who agreed with that stance. It should be noted that the list did not include all possible groups to be victimized but it is also true that the list exists in many other laws, including employment and housing. However, removal of the list leads to the "Founding Fathers" argument. That is, if a group isn't listed or there is no group, and the issue of abuse comes up, the attackers and their supporters could claim that the group being abused was not meant to be protected by the law, much in the same way some individuals claim that the Founding Fathers didn't mean certain types of speech to be protected under the First Amendment. So there are plenty of groups who take avantage to segregate various issues by race, gender, sexuality, and other factors when those issues can and do affect anyone and everyone, both directly and indirectly. Andrew