Hey, American Family Association — feel free to use that campaign name for next year’s anti-gay effort on A Day of Silence.

The AFA, along with the Campaign for Children and Families, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Council, and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays last week called on parents to keep their children from classrooms on April 17 to counter the 13th annual A Day of Silence.

A Day of Silence took place in thousands of U.S. schools to call attention to the plight of GLBT students. Launched at the University of Virginia in 1996, the day takes place year after year in the long tradition of peaceful, powerful student statements. Students on college, high school and middle school campuses take vows of silence to call attention to homophobia in the schools.

How does the uncompassionate right respond?

The Christian Conservatives for Cutting Class call for a walkout.

“The implicit purpose of the Day of Silence is to undermine the belief that homosexuality is immoral,” the groups said in a statement. “It is the belief of the sponsors of the walkout that parents should no longer passively accept the political usurpation of taxpayer-funded public school classrooms through student silence.”

“This day is not about ‘tolerance’ as it claims, but about forcing propaganda and acceptance of high-risk behavior into the schools with no opposing views allowed,” said Linda Harvey of the Mission America Coalition.

Last week’s A Day of Silence and those that have come before and will come after are not about forcing propaganda on students.

The day deals with high-risk behavior, but not what Linda Harvey implied as high-risk behavior. The day deals with high-risk behavior such as the bullying and harassment of GLBT youth and allies that too school teachers, principals and other administrators ignore.

The cards participants distribute on A Day of Silence read, “My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling and harassment.

“I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness and making a commitment to address these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.”

I know it was a long time ago that I attended junior high and high school, but surveys of students show that what I learned in school is still the rule today. It still is far more common to see a teacher punish a student for chewing gum than for verbally harassing a gay student. Blow a bubble and the punishment might be detention. Call a kid a “fag” and go on your way, day after day.

The anti-GLBT abuse that A Day of Silence spotlights does more than hurt feelings.

Nearly nine out of 10 GLBT youth report being verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Nearly 44 percent of GLBT students report being physically harassed, and about a quarter of GLBT students report being physically assaulted.

The abuse can make school unbearable.

A GLSEN survey in Michigan schools found that the grade-point average of GLBT students who were more frequently physically harassed because of their sexual orientation was a half grade lower than of students who were less frequently harassed.

The abuse sometimes can make life unbearable.

Last week in Springfield, Mass., hundreds of people attended the funeral of 11-year-old Carl Walker-Hoover, who hanged himself after enduring months of anti-gay harassment at the New Leadership Charter School.

There was no leadership at Carl’s school. Despite his mother’s repeated complaints about the bullying, school administrators did nothing to help.

Carl would have celebrated his 12th birthday April 17 — it was A Day of Silence that spoke volumes about the climate in the classrooms, in part due to the thousands of GLBT students and their allies who took a vow of silence but also, in part, due to the efforts of Homophobes for Hookie.

The AFA, which regularly fights LGBT civil rights legislation, originally bought time to broadcast the infomercial on Monday at 7 p.m. but the station moved it when President Obama announced an 8 p.m. news conference.

“We didn’t feel that it was the appropriate place, leading into the presidential event,” WOOD-TV program director Craig Cole said.

The station then slated the infomercial to run on Wednesday.  But as opposition mounted and hundreds of e-mails began flooding the station, Cole suggested to the AFA that it run on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Late Wednesday, station manager Diane Kniowski said the AFA had not responded to the offer to run the paid program on Saturday and that it was pulling the show.

“We made a gesture of the 2-3 p.m. Saturday time period. It’s been 24 hours and we had no response,” Kniowski said in a statement.

“Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves in the middle of someone else’s fight. Ours was a fair offer and we are removing ourselves from this matter.”

It is believed the AFA is attempting to negotiate with other stations across the country to carry the hour-long program.

The infomercial, “Speechless: Silencing Christians,” is hosted by conservative talk show host Janet Parshall. In a 2006 appearance on the Larry King show on CNN, Parshall suggested Matthew Shepard’s “lifestyle” was responsible for his murder and called gay adoption “state-sanctioned child abuse.”

“‘Speechless’ purposely promote lies and distortions,” the national LGBT rights group Human Rights Campaign said in a statement to its members which led to the e-mail campaign to the TV station.

The program says that if hate crimes laws are passed, pastors will be prosecuted for preaching what the Bible says about homosexuality. It also claims that legislation providing employment protection based on sexual orientation or gender identity will force churches to hire homosexuals.

The show additionally says that allowing the government to redefine marriage hurts children because studies show children need a mother and father to do well in life.

“This should be our wake-up call.  We are poised to make real progress, for the first time, for millions of LGBT Americans.  We know it and so do our opponents,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese.

“We must stand guard and not allow them to stop these overdue, basic protections by rolling out the same, tired script albeit in new packaging.  Today’s action proves we have the voices and the power to demand a fair fight and a fair debate.”

Although WOOD-TV has dropped the program, it is available online at the AFA Web site.

The conservative group, which boasts more than two-million members, has previously targeted companies it says supports LGBT issues.

In January, it urged supporters to sign an online pledge to boycott Pepsi products and to call the company to tell it “to stop promoting the homosexual agenda.”

“In the last two years, Pepsi has given $500,000 to the Human Rights Campaign and $500,000 to the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The $1,000,000 was to be used to help promote homosexuality in the workplace,” the AFA said at the time.

In October, it ended a boycott of McDonald’s after the fast-food giant agreed to end its support for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.  In addition, a company employee to was appointed to chamber’s board of directors resigned.

McDonald’s incurred the wrath of the AFA after it made a $20,000 donation to the chamber, and Richard Ellis, who until September was vice president of communications for the chain, was named to the chamber’s board of directors. The company said Ellis resigned after moving to McDonald’s Canadian operation.

The AFA previously boycotted Disney for several years over its support for Gay Days at Disney World, although the company was not an official sponsor of the event.

It boycotted Cincinnati-based Proctor and Gamble over the company’s support for the repeal of a city charter amendment that prevented Cincinnati city council from enacting any laws that would recognize gays and lesbians.

The group boycotted Kraft for its support of the Chicago Gay Games and threatened to boycott Wal-Mart over its involvement with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

An AFA boycott of Ford was heralded as a success by the organization, which noted that it had resulted in a drop in sales and share value.  But most financial analysts said that Ford’s problems were really the result of vehicle designs that failed to impress the public. Ford was the only carmaker of the Detroit big three to decline a federal bailout.

The conservative Christian group launched its nationwide boycott of Ford in 2005 over the automaker’s support for LGBT issues, briefly put it on hold and then reinstated it.

The AFA claimed victory when Ford began pulling its ads from LGBT publications, but industry observers and the company said the ad pullout was part of a downsizing of expenses.