By Jessica Lussenhop Wednesday, May 30 2012

Illustration by Ellen Weinstein.

---

Bottle-blond bangs swept over one eye — this, the other boys whispered, was not a man’s haircut. One of them — a popular, handsome specimen — grew particularly incensed with his classmate’s new look. He formed a posse and found a pair of scissors. After locating the blond boy, the gang tackled him. The boy screamed for help, but none came. Lock by lock, his hair was lopped off.

Courtesy of the ACLU

Seth Walsh, 13, was bullied relentlessly at his California school before he took his own life in 2010.

Courtesy of the ACLU

Becky Collins, right, says her 15-year-old son Zach King, left, was attacked and beaten in a classroom because he is gay.

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

Soon after, the boy disappeared from school. Eventually, he returned, his hair clipped short and back to its natural brown color.

There was no disciplinary action, but the incident would forever haunt everyone involved, save for the lead attacker, Mitt Romney. He forgot about it, married a pretty girl, produced five handsome sons, and made hundreds of millions of dollars. Now he wants to be president.

Gay kids have long been a target of bullying. Until recently, incidents could be laughed off as “pranks” and no one suffered any consequences, save for the gay kid. But in the last few years, that has begun to change.

Some say it started the night Tyler Clementi leaped from the George Washington Bridge. He’d just discovered that his roommate at Rutgers University had used a webcam to spy on a kiss he shared with another man. Police found Clementi’s body seven days later.

Clementi wasn’t the only gay kid to commit suicide that September — there were 10 in all. Asher Brown, a 13-year-old boy from Cypress, Texas, shot himself in the head with his stepfather’s Beretta. Seth Walsh, 13, hanged himself in his Tehachapi, California, backyard just a half-hour after his mother had rescued him from a gang of bullies.

“It is a totally unnecessary tragedy for my children,” says Wendy Walsh, Seth’s mother. “I don’t know where all the hate comes from.”

Now bullies everywhere are being held to account. Dharun Ravi, the roommate who spied on Clementi, was charged and found guilty of a hate crime — last week he was sentenced to 30 days in jail. The Department of Justice brought harsh sanctions down on Walsh’s school district, and the local legislature passed “Seth’s Law,” making it mandatory for schools to formally investigate bullying claims. News of 15-year-old Billy Lucas’ suicide inspired the creation of the “It Gets Better” Project, a video series designed to show gay kids there’s a better life after graduation.

“That September woke a lot of older, grown-up LGBT members to the fact that while it had gotten so much better for us out in the world, there had been the inverse effect of upping the temperature for kids in school,” says Dan Savage, the alternative-weekly sex columnist who started “It Gets Better.” “I really do think it shifted the culture.”

The world swooned earlier this month when President Obama gave gay marriage his personal blessing, but his administration’s efforts to combat bullying may actually be his more valuable contribution. Under his direction, the Department of Justice has vigorously pursued schools all over the country for failing to protect gay kids. Obama also endorsed the Student Non-Discrimination Act, a bill introduced by Sen. Al Franken to make homosexuality a federally protected class.

“It gives them sort of the same civil rights as racial minorities got from the ‘64 Civil Rights Act, that women got from Title IX,” says Franken. “I think more people are beginning to see this for what it is…. This is a group of people that just overwhelmingly are the victims of bullying and harassment.”

When it comes to gay bullying, society seems to be experiencing something of a paradigm shift.

“I compare it to what happened in the South in the civil rights movement,” says Jamie Nabozny, the plaintiff in the country’s first gay bullying case. “The fall of 2010 will be comparable to what happened in Selma.”

---

Until recently, the only classroom conversation about homosexuality and kids was how to keep them separate. In the ’70s, teachers were routinely fired for coming out of the closet. There was no such thing as a Gay-Straight Alliance club in school.

The arrival of AIDS in the ’80s forced sex education programs to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality. That in turn triggered a righteous panic. In 1987, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms took to the Senate floor brandishing a Gay Men’s Health Crisis comic as part of his successful bid to ban federal funding for AIDS education materials that “promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities.”

Eight states still have language on the law books derived from Helms’ “no homo promo” policy. In Texas, sex-ed classes are required to teach that homosexuality is “not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense.” In Arizona, the law forbids schools from portraying homosexuality “as a positive alternative lifestyle.”

“There was this fear that if you were talking about gay people, you were having inappropriate conversations with students about sex,” says Kim Westheimer, director of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Welcoming Schools project.

The gay rights movement began to push back in the ’90s. An openly gay teacher in Boston named Kevin Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to help educators who wanted to offer counsel to gay kids. In 1999, a judge affirmed that Gay-Straight Alliance clubs had a right to gather on school grounds.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next Page »

Rather than being a lazy communicator by using “generic” phrases as adjectives, try being more original by using more appropriate descriptions. Nobody else looks up to lazy people. Do you?

This ongoing campaign by GLSEN  is one that everyone should follow. Even if you are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, it’s still not okay to say, “That’s So Gay.” Here’s a bit about GLSEN and why you should not be saying, “That’s So Gay.” Try to remember this and explain it to others who are still too lazy to think of anything original on their own.

GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students. Established in 1990, GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes to creating a more vibrant and diverse community.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens experience homophobic remarks and harassment throughout the school day, creating an atmosphere where they feel disrespected, unwanted and unsafe. Homophobic remarks such as “that’s so gay” are the most commonly heard; these slurs are often unintentional and a common part of teens’ vernacular. Most do not recognize the consequences, but the casual use of this language often carries over into more overt harassment.

This campaign aims to raise awareness about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBT bias and behavior in America’s schools. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce and prevent the use of homophobic language in an effort to create a more positive environment for LGBT teens. The campaign also aims to reach adults, including school personnel and parents; their support of this message is crucial to the success of efforts to change behavior.

Related articles

• ThinkB4YouSpeak - What you say has more of an effect on others than you may think. (snoopervizion.tumblr.com)
• Bullying Statistics - Teen Violence, Anger, Bullying, Treatment Options (snoopervizion.tumblr.com)
• New Scale Developed To Help Measure Levels Of Homophobic Bullying (medicalnewstoday.com)
• New study suggests gender gap around homophobic bullying (eurekalert.org)
• Nearly 9 Out of 10 LGBT Students Harassed in School, New GLSEN Report Finds (prweb.com)
• Bullying Among Children and Youth on Perceptions and Differences in Sexual Orientation (education.com)
• Middle School LGBT Students Face Extreme Levels of Harassment, Higher than Their High School Peers, Research Brief Finds (prweb.com)

Parental Support of Coming Out Improves Long-Term Health

By RICK NAUERT PHD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 11, 2012

The decision to tell your parents that you are gay, lesbian or bisexual is often difficult. New research suggests “coming out” may be good for your health, particularity when your parents support the decision.

Boston University School of Public Health researchers determined that two-thirds of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults in a representative Massachusetts sample reported receiving positive support from their parents after coming out to them.

Their incidence of mental health and substance abuse problems was significantly lower than those who did not receive support, the authors reported.

Researchers discovered 75 percent of Massachusetts lesbian, gay and bisexual adults have informed their parents on their sexuality. On average, individuals told their parents of their sexual orientation when they were 25 years old.

Investigators discovered the response to an individuals’ decision to come out led to different health outcomes.

Gay and bisexual males whose parents did not support them, for example, had six to seven times the odds of serious depression and binge drinking, while lesbian and bisexual females had five times the odds of developing serious depression, and 11 times the odds of illicit drug use.

In the study, published in the Journal of Homosexuality, Emily Rothman, Ph.D., and colleagues surveyed 5,658 adults ages 18-64 years old in Massachusetts using a statewide surveillance system.

They explored whether coming out—and the reaction that it received — was associated with better or worse adult health. The authors controlled for factors including age, race, education level and health insurance status, in order to focus as narrowly as possible on the association between coming out and adult health status.

“These results do not surprise me at all,” said Nicole Sullivan, a 22-year-old student at Bunker Hill Community College who came out as bisexual when she was 19 years old.

“I struggled with mental health and drug problems during my adolescence, and I know that some of it is because I didn’t feel accepted at home. I am really grateful that I had cousins who supported me, and it’s because of them that I was able to get healthy.”

The authors found that the act of coming out (instead of remaining “closeted”) was generally associated with better health for lesbian and bisexual women, but that this was not similarly true for gay and bisexual men.

“It’s possible that the stress of not disclosing your sexuality to your parents affects men and women differently,” explained Rothman, an associate professor of community health sciences.

“In general, gay and bisexual men may be able to conduct their sexual lives apart from their parents with less stress. On the other hand, it’s also possible that this was an artifact of our particular sample.”

Rothman added: “Given the high rates of suicide and self-harm among lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) youth–and the high costs of treating mental-health and substance-abuse disorders—it’s critical that we understand what we can do to promote better health for LGB kids.”

The researchers suggest a preliminary intervention to improve LGB youth health would be for national academies of pediatric medicine to develop and disseminate guidelines or recommendations that would encourage pediatricians to provide all parents of adolescents with tips for supporting children if they come out as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

“The way that parents treat their LGB children when they come out is an important public health topic that has received too little attention to date,” Rothman said.

“Our message is that parents should take note: The way we treat our LGB children, even from before the time they disclose their sexual orientation status, may have a long-term, significant impact on their health and ability to handle life’s challenges.”

Source: Boston University