The Internet and School Bullying: Billy Wolfe Again

The Billy Wolfe school bullying story keeps unfolding in our local media. Yesterday’s statewide daily the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette carried an article by Evie Blad entitled “Networking Web Sites Enable New Generations of Bullies” (see NW Arkansas Democrat-Gazette copy entitled “School Bullies Move Online; Rules Tricky to Write, Enforce” (www.nwanews.com/adg/News/221928).

The article notes something I stressed in my 1 April posting about this story, “School Bullying: We Have Met the Bully; He Is Us.” This is the use of the internet as a new extension of school bullying, one that both mobilizes those targeting an individual, and allows the bullying to move beyond the boundaries of the school.

The Evie Blad article also illustrates several other new uses of the internet in school bullying incidents such as the Billy Wolfe story: this is the development of online groups to publicize the story of someone bullied and to muster support for the victim of bullying, as well as the gathering of online support groups that purport to tell the “whole story” when a classmate is bullied. As Blad notes, two such groups have formed in the wake of the New York Times article that first broke the Billy Wolfe story.

One of these, “The Whole Story,” is at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12130431318. This group was formed the day after the New York Times article. Its homepage indicates that it was formed with 96 members immediately joining, which suggests to me that this is a well-organized effort. The group info section of the homepage contains a statement by group organizer William Michael Sharp which provides the following rationale for the formation of this facebook group: “We wish to share the whole story about the Billy Wolfe ordeal and to do so we would like those who have had alteracations [sic] with Billy to come forth and share their side of the story, which with their permission will be used for a documentary filmed by John [Erwin], Skyler [Gambert] and myself.”

Clicking on the friends’ list of group organizer William Michael Sharp, I note that Benny Burk, one of the young men suspended for having assaulted Billy Wolfe, is a friend of Sharp. Gambert’s friends’ list includes both Benny Burk and another young man supsended for assault, Ian Teeters. The "Whole Story" homepage notes that anyone seeking to contact Mr. Sharp may do so at his office at the Mancave in Fayetteville.

The second group, another facebook group called “Not Cool, Billy Wolfe Haters,” was spearheaded by Crystal Yeakley, and is at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12130431318. Yeakley’s statement of intent provides the following reason for her group: “This is a group, just for everyone who likes Billy and doesn't think it's fair just because he's different he gets picked on. ): I'm one of the only girls in the group of guys who hangs and chills with Billy and all you Billy haters are just plain wrong. I've decided to create this group out of anger and a mess of other emotions.”

Both Sharp and Yeakley are students at Fayetteville High East, which is also Billy Wolfe’s campus. Yeakley’s group lists Billy Wolfe as one of the three “officers” of the group.

The “Not Cool, Billy Wolfe Haters” has no discussion threads at present. It has two links to videos, one of the bus stop attack on Billy Wolfe, the other of a CNN video regarding his story. The “Whole Story” site has several discussion threads, most of which purport to try to get at the “real” story about Billy Wolfe’s experience of bullying.

At this point, as an outsider, though one with a strong professed commitment to combat school bullying—and, in particular, bullying of youth tagged as gender-inappropriate—I would be precipitous if I came to any solid conclusions on the basis of the “evidence” offered in these two websites. What the public has to go with in deciding how to assess the Billy Wolfe bullying story is 1) the fact (never denied, to my knowledge) that some of his tormentors set up a website encouraging his bullying and identifying him as a “little bitch” and “a homosexual that no one likes”; pictures of a boy with bruises and black eyes; a video of this boy being assaulted by fellow students.

Given that evidence, it is disconcerting—disturbing, in fact—to read some of the tired old justifications for bullying on the “Whole Story” website. The “testimony” of many students that Billy Wolfe has threatened them with knives, has killed a cat, has applauded the death of a mother, has whispered dire threats to all and sundry, strains credulity. A youth who has engaged in all the vile deeds recounted on this website would have long ago been in juvenile custody, and/or expelled from school, I feel certain.

Please understand me: I am not denying the possibility that Billy Wolfe, or any boy in his situation, may well lash out. I am not suggesting that Billy Wolfe may not have fought back against his tormentors, or that he may be full of anger, or that he may speak out of the rage someone would justifiably feel when he has been tormented for years. There is clear, undeniable evidence that the bullying of Billy Wolfe has been going on for some years now. There is also evidence to suggest that school officials have not done nearly enough to counter this bullying, or to stop it.

In addition to the blame-the-victim tactic of many contributing to the “Whole Story” threads—a reprehensible tactic, since it trades in rumors that will inflame an already tense situation—there is a very clear concern to engage in impression management on this thread. A comment by one of the three website managers, Skyler Gambert, on the day the site was set up, suggests this intent. On 25 March, Mr. Gambert begins a thread entitled “Bias” with the following plea to group members: “Please write The NY times and let them know how biased the story published was. Its ridiculous the way that they portrayed Fayetteville, its schools, and the students and faculty. This whole thing will have a serious impact on the way the school is run, so let your voice be heard.”

A Fayetteville high graduate who is now at the University of Arkansas, Jonathan Cox, states on the same thread and same day that students who have joined the website are engaged in “damage control”—something he does not decry, but applauds. Cox is interviewed by Evie Blad, who quotes him to say, “What struck me is that I never really felt that air of bullying in Fayetteville.”

What strikes me as I read that comment—and the threads seeking to give the “whole story” re: Billy Wolfe’s bullying—is that not a single comment I find on the threads adverts to the history of bullying of youth tagged as gay in the Fayetteville school system. There is not (not that I have located) a single reference in any of these threads to the story of Willi Wagner, which I have recounted in previous postings about the Billy Wolfe story.

Given what happened to Willi Wagner in Fayetteville only a decade ago, how can any Fayetteville student seriously say that he/she has not encountered an “air of bullying” in the Fayetteville schools? Willi Wagner’s case led to a ground-breaking decision in which the federal Office of Civil Rights reached a “Commitment to Resolve” with the Fayetteville school district, with the district promising to prevent any future harassment of students identified as gay. Wagner’s was the first such complaint filed under Title IX on behalf of a harassed gay student.”

There is every reason to think that bullying of students tagged as gender-inappropriate is possible in the Fayetteville school system—as it is possible in school systems all around the nation. There is also every reason for supporters of the Fayetteville schools to stop damage-control campaigns and deal with problems continuing to trouble their community and its schools.

Given the evidence that Billy Wolfe has been assaulted, the problems with which Fayetteville needs to deal clearly include school bullying premised on claims that a student is “a little bitch” and “a homosexual that no one likes." There is no way around the ugly intrusion of homophobia into repeated stories of school bullying in Fayetteville.

This is the problem students who want to tell the whole story need to be getting at. This is the problem about which they are conspicuously silent in their postings about the whole story. Some of those postings seem to assume that a student who behaves as Billy does, who is non-conformist and sassy, deserves his lumps. Running through some of the postings on this discussion board, there is a troubling, reprehensible assumption that real boys don’t merit the kind of pummeling Billy has received.

The fact that this assumption is apparently unconscious in the thinking of many of the Fayetteville students posting on the threads makes it all the more troubling. Unconscious assumptions feeding prejudice that issues in violence have to be brought into consciousness and examined in the light of day, if such social violence is to be eliminated.

At least one poster on the “Whole Story” thread suggests that there is, indeed, another side to the Billy Wolfe story—a side different from the rebellious-boy-deserving-lumps narrative that runs through other students’ accounts. In a thread called “Expieriences” [sic] on 26 March, Lily Allder states that she was in school with Billy Wolfe from 7^th through 10^th grade. Allder states, “I had heard A LOT about him in 8th grade, it was always negative. I couldn't understand why he was targeted more than any other person in that school.

What I have always remembered was in 9th grade, one day in U.S. History class, I was sitting in my usual seat in the very back and I was watching the whole class...and some of the boys in my class were all pretty much harassing Billy. It was very immature, and I can't stand immaturity, and I can't stand bullying. So, I told them to shut up and leave him alone. They quit that day..but it never ended. In about the middle of 9th grade, he got transfered into my 7th period math class because of other people probably harassing him in other classes.

I don't think Billy is a bully. HE NEVER said anything rude to me. I mean he was never super nice to me, but no one really is SUPER nice. I know about 10 boys I could name right now who bully everyone. Bullies are people who say mean things to everyone, and harass innocent people because they're not the same as everyone else. I've had many of my close friends be bullied.

I always felt sorry for Billy because I knew his personality wouldn't allow him to just ignore everyone and forget about it. So, what do bullies do when they get a rise out of their victim? They KEEP DOING IT.”

Allder blames the school for not trying to address this long-standing problem of bullying until the hate group formed on facebook. In her view, “Honestly, everyone knew it [the ongoing bullying of Billie Wolfe] happened." Another student posting the same day on the same thread, Megan Thompson, substantiates Ms. Allder’s account.

They quit that day..but it never ended: if Allder is telling the truth (and I have no reason to doubt her—it is an act of courage to speak out when so many others are telling a different story) the bullying of Billy Wolfe has been consistent through middle school into high school, and has gone substantially unchallenged by the school system.

Why keep probing this story now that it has gotten dragged down into the mire of he-said, she-said rumor mongering? Because we have to tell these stories. We have to do so if we want to claim humanity.

We have to understand the dynamics that keep making them unfold. To some of us, those dynamics are now as clear as the dynamics of a Greek tragedy, in which the audience watches characters blinded by hubris follow the well-worn path to lamentable ends, without being able to interfere with the unfolding of the tragic events. To some of us who have watched this tragedy over and over—often first in our own experience, and then by paying careful attention to the unfolding of the same tragedy in other lives—it is perplexing that society continues to remain willfully blind to this particular form of social violence. A form of violence easy to address and eradicate, if we will only stop thinking it is inevitable, that the object of the violence deserves to be knocked into submission, and that macho males are lords of the universe . . . .

I cannot help thinking, as I continue pondering what is going on in Fayetteville these days, of Bette Greene’s book The Drowning of Stephan Jones. Greene was raised in east Arkansas outside Memphis. This novel is set near Fayetteville. It involves another of those Greek-tragedy stories in which we see a gay couple move into a small town in north Arkansas which they have reason to believe will be tolerant. With horrifying certainty, as one begins the novel, one knows the inevitable dénoument: gay bashing that leads to the violent death of one of the characters, gay bashing fueled by deeply ingrained prejudices justified by religion.

Greene gave an interview about this novel in 1994 to Lynne Alvine, an associate professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The interview has been published as an article entitled “Understanding Adolescent Homophobia,” The Alan Review 21,2 (winter 1994). This text is online at http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter94/Alvine.html.

In the interview, Greene notes that she did abundant research as she composed this novel. She wanted to understand the roots of homophobia, and why violence premised on homophobia is still acceptable in the state in which she grew up, as in other places. Greene finds that the object of adolescent bullying is often "society's designated victim"—“a type of young boy who is sensitive, shy, slender and, often, studious.”

Greene’s research led her to the conclusion that, though not all bullies of boys tagged as gender-inappropriate are overtly religious, religious justifications play a key role in almost all gay-bashings: “I tried to isolate it as much as I could. I tried to find out where does the hate come from? Not all the boys were religious, but they all had been affected by religion. They knew it was OK to do violence to gay people because they thought it said so in the Bible.”

Greene concludes that the churches are in significant respects responsible for justifying gay-bashing: “Homophobia is endemic in America. The air we breathe is filled with homophobia. A great amount of it is coming from fundamental Christianity.”

Greene is not optimistic about the willingness of most students (or their parents, or the churches) to speak out when such violence occurs. Her research in writing The Drowning of Stephan Jones led her to conclude that 10 to 20% of young male students tagged as gender-inappropriate because they do not engage in macho activities (some of whom are gay, some of whom are straight) are persecuted in our schools by an equal number of boys “who want to show how virile they all are.” The bullies are bolstered by other students whom Greene identifies as “the eggers-on.” Finally, in Greene’s analysis, the majority of students form a silent majority who stand by, unwilling to challenge what is going on, watching to see the outcome—which is inevitably unfortunate when one boy is singled out from the group and set upon by other boys who are unchecked in their violence.

Fayetteville, are you listening? You need wise women like Bette Greene to advise you and your school system now. You need to be addressing the problem of homophobia head-on, overtly, in your educational networks. You need to call your churches to accountability for covering over this unacceptable kind of social violence—indeed, for fostering it.

As someone who grew up in a small Arkansas town (as well as in Little Rock, which is a small town masquerading as a city), I know all the old tried and true mechanisms of social control, particularly when someone tries to tell us a truth or ask a question we don’t want to hear: we freeze the person out; we circulate ugly rumors about him or her; we insinuate it’s all about money or sex; we collaborate to shun and exclude.

These social mechanisms keep us backward and unenlightened. They also do not address social problems which will, inevitably, find their way to the attention of wider and wider audiences—as Billy Wolfe’s story has done. We have work to do, and that work has to get to the roots of the problem, not try to cover the problem over with impression management techniques that implicitly justify the behavior of the worst among us.

Men as Lords of Creation and School Bullying

Good news: the bullying experienced by Billy Wolfe of Fayetteville, Arkansas, about which I blogged two days ago, is getting national attention. Yesterday’s Towleroad blog picked up a 26 March “Today” show interview of Matt Lauer with Billy Wolfe and his mother: www.towleroad.com/2008/03/towleroad-gu-12.html.

Bad news: this kind of school bullying continues, with no obvious end in sight. The bullying of Billy Wolfe is only the latest in a series of troubling incidents, all with a similar pattern, in Arkansas schools in the last decade or so. Though studies indicate this is a national phenomenon, and is hardly confined to Arkansas schools, I am concerned about the incidents in schools in the state in which I grew up and live, because they demand my attention. They are in my own back yard.

My blog posting of two days ago mentions the case of William Wagner. As the posting indicates, Willi Wagner experienced a brutal gay bashing over a decade ago while enrolled in a Fayetteville school. On 2 December 1996, as Willi and some friends left school to get lunch at a store near the school, six fellow students pulled up in a truck. They jumped out of the truck, shouting, ''C'mere you faggot.'' The students then surrounded Willi Wagner, knocking him to the ground, breaking his nose and kicking him with cowboy boots, bruising a kidney and leaving welts over his head and body.

A troubling aspect of this and similar stories is the failure or inability of the school system to address bullying of this sort, until it escalates into physical violence. Willi Wagner and his parents had reported incidents of harassment against Willi—who came to identify himself as gay during his adolescent years—for two years prior to the gay-bashing incident. The Wagners report that little was done to address the problem, and on one occasion, they were told by a school official that Willi Wagner was causing the bullying.

Blaming the victim—particularly the boy considered to be gender-inappopriate—is another troubling and recurrent pattern in these stories. In Wagner’s case, though the youths who participated in the gay-bashing incident were placed on probation after criminal charges were filed against them, bullying continued even after this horrific incident. When the school did not address the on-going harassment, Wagner and his parents filed an Office of Civil Rights (OCR) complaint in January 1997. The parents ultimately chose to remove Willi Wagner from his Fayetteville school because they feared his life was in danger.

In June 1998, OCR reached a “Commitment to Resolve” agreement with the Fayetteville Public School system, in which the Fayetteville schools agreed to recognize "sexual harassment directed at gay or lesbian students" and to implement procedures to train faculty, staff, and students in ways to deal with such harassment. As a result of her experiences with her son and the Fayetteville school system, Willi’s mother Carolyn Wagner helped found an organization, Families United Against Hate (FUAH), to address the problem of school bullying. She currently serves as vice-president of FUAH (see the links column for a link to FUAH—www.fuah.org).

Following the Willi Wagner story, another student in an Arkansas school made national news with a story of harassment he experienced as an openly gay youth. In March 2003, Thomas McLaughlin reported harassment by teachers and school officials at Jacksonville Junior High School north of Little Rock for a period over a year prior to this time. McLaughlin was fourteen when these incidents occurred. According to McLaughlin, when his science teacher overheard him refuse to deny to another boy that he was gay, the teacher notified his guidance counselor, who called his mother to inform her that her son was gay.

Prior to the call to his mother, the school’s assistant principal had threatened Thomas McLaughlin, giving him an ultimatum: either tell his parents he was gay, or the school would do so. McLaughlin’s science teacher then wrote him a lengthy letter informing him that the bible indicated he would go to hell if he was gay.

This story points to another troubling aspect of many cases of school bullying: not only do teachers and school officials sometimes admit acting on their own religiously based prejudices, but they actually defend harassment premised on those prejudices.

After these incidents, Thomas McLaughlin continued to experience harassment from teachers and administrators. Though it was teachers and school officials who had made the stir about Thomas’s sexual orientation, he was told that he might not discuss homosexuality in school, and would be punished if he brought the subject up. A new assistant principal brought Thomas McLaughlin to his office in the spring of 2003 and forced him to read aloud a Bible passage that, in the view of the principal, condemns homosexuality.

McLaughlin was informed by one teacher that homosexuality is “sickening,” and was suspended from school for telling other students that he had been forced to read Bible passages. When he and a female student were overheard talking about a boy both considered cute, he was disciplined. The female student was not.

In March 2003, the ACLU filed suit against the Pulaski County Special School District on behalf of the McLaughlin family, arguing that Thomas McLaughlin had a constitutional right to be openly gay in a public school. U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele upheld this right, noting that under the First Amendment, schools cannot silence or restrict students' speech unless it is disruptive. Following the ruling, the school agreed not to proselytize or punish students on the basis of sexual orientation.

Though Billy Wolfe does not identify as gay, as my posting two days ago indicated, the bullying he is experienced is premised on charges that he is “a bitch” and “a homosexual.”** This is a recurrent pattern in incidents of school bullying across the U.S.: boys identified as gender-inappropriate are bullied solely and precisely on the basis of the gay tag. When such bullying occurs, the following are also all-too-common typical steps in the bullying process:

1. The victim is punished.
2. The bullies are protected and rewarded.
3. The school system turns a blind eye to the bullying, tacitly justifying it.
4. The school system sometimes actively participates in the bullying, if the boy identifies himself as gay.
5. Parents and the community at large are not only not outraged at such school violence: they sometimes condone and promote it, due to their prejudice against gay persons.
6. The violence escalates from verbal bullying to outright physical violence.
7. Its ultimate outcome in some cases is murder.
   

I grew up in Arkansas. I was schooled in Arkansas (with one year in a Louisiana school) through high school. As I have reported on this blog, I know the system of bullying of boys deemed gender-inappropriate at a personal level. I myself was bullied in junior high school. I experienced something of what all these boys have experienced, when coaches and school officials not only did not punish those who kicked me in the ribs, knocked me down in gym class, and groped and verbally taunted me, but encouraged them to behave this way.

I understand something of the mentality underlying this kind of school bullying. It occurs in a cultural context that puts a premium on belligerent masculinity. There is a tacit assumption in such cultures that men must prove they are men—by exhibiting traits of violence that demonstrate that they are at the top of the food chain. There is also a tacit assumption that men own everything—macho men, alpha men, that is, do so—and have a right to take what is theirs, even if the taking involves rapacity and brutality.

Those “beneath” the alpha men on the food chain—women and men regarded as feminine/weak—are objects. They are objects of violence that is excused and expected, because men are men. Men must be men. Being violent is what being a man is about. It is how a man proves he is an alpha male. Society hangs together because it adheres to a natural order: men are at top, women and feminized men are at bottom. Question that natural order or undermine it in any way, and you threaten to destabilize everything. Alpha men must be permitted to prove their alpha status in order to keep society stable and functioning.

Arkansas is a place in which schools place more emphasis on sports than academics. I imagine some of my fellow citizens will regard that statement as an overstatement. In response, I would point to the outlay of economic resources that goes, in all of our schools, to supporting athletic programs, as compared to the resources we place into academic pots. I would also ask if the citizens of the state are as avidly glued to their television sets when a science bowl is televised, as they are when the Hogs throw balls on the field.

We value men above all—men who can hunt, shoot, fish, play rough contact sports, demonstrate their machismo by lording it over “weaker” men. We will not succeed in preventing bullying in American schools, which reports indicate is much more often a pattern of male-on-male violence than female-on-female violence, until we address the culture of machismo underlying school bullying.

Machismo and hatred/fear of the feminine are deeply interwoven with homophobia. And school bullying, of the violent, sickening sort that took the life of Lawrence King early this year, arises out of homophobia. To address school bullying, we have to address homophobia.

No child needs to lose his life again in an American school. The churches must do something to address this problem and the homophobia that underlies it. If they do not do so soon, they will lose all credibility.

**I recall another incident in the past decade in an Arkansas school very similar to the incident involving Billy Wolfe. I have, however, been unable to retrieve information about it to include in this posting. This incident occurred in a junior high school in Sheridan, Arkansas, south of Little Rock. My recollection is that it involved a boy who did not identify as gay, but was tagged as gay by classmates, due to his interest in art and gardening. On that basis, he was mercilessly harassed.

Easter Church, Welcome Spaces, and School Bullying

So. Easter leaves us with the obligation of returning to the everyday.

No easy task, that. The precise obligation is to live the everyday as if it is more than ordinary. If Easter has any meaning, that’s its central message: transfiguring the everyday, so that it is shot through with significance transcending the “mere” ordinary.

Such highfalutin’ language. Poor chatty little Christianity, E.M. Forster said. Always relying on one more word to limp along, to try to get its message across to a new group of believers.

And I understand that critique, and share it, so that I don’t belong—not on the churched side of the line, not among the respectable. I can’t be there, because I don’t see a lot of transfiguring going on. I completely understand—and agree with—Nietzsche when he says that if anyone is going to buy the Christian message of salvation, Christians need to look more saved. Or with Gandhi, when he observed that he found Christ exceedingly attractive, but did not find Christians attractive.

I write, think, live out of a specifically gay perspective and gay experience with the church. That experience is, brutally and frankly, one of unwelcome. There is no other word to describe what happens to us who are gay, vis-à-vis the churches.

I know that many churches have sought to create welcoming spaces in their midst for gay believers. The Episcopal church in the U.S. has ordained an openly (emphasis on “openly”) gay bishop.

And yet that bishop is not being invited to the coming Canterbury Conference. The mere acknowledgment that some priests and some bishops and many believers are openly gay (emphasis on “openly”) is intolerable for some members of the Anglican communion. A communion in which a leader of a ministry, Changing Attitudes, in Nigeria to build bridges of acceptance between the church and the gay community was savagely beaten last week: see http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/03/anglican-groups-leader-condemns.html. News reports indicate that violence such as this towards LGBT people and their supporters in Nigeria is actively being encouraged by some Anglican church leaders in Nigeria, including Archbishop Peter Akinola.

The churches are, at their best, tolerant. They are not welcoming. Not yet. They are not affirming, accepting, capable of blessing gay people and our lives and our relationships. They are not transfigured. They are not places in which gay people can experience transfiguration—the Easter experience or the Easter message.

And so we live our spiritual lives on the outside, those of us who care to salvage any vocabulary of spirituality from our brutal encounters with the churches. And, ultimately, it’s not precisely the brutality, the savagery of the churches towards gay persons that is the all-determining factor in my inability to commune: it’s the stolid refusal of church people even to admit that the inability to welcome—to welcome anyone at all—undercuts everything about church, everything about its message.

A church that is unable to welcome—anyone at all—is simply not church. A church that is incapable of becoming a welcoming space for anyone in need of compassion and healing is not truly church: such a church is not living the gospel message in a sacramental way which allows that message to be understood and accessed through the life of the church itself.

I say all of this today against the backdrop of ongoing conversations with some of my co-religionists at the National Catholic Reporter blog café—conversations that leave me extremely frustrated. The struggle to establish some common ground for dialogue with people who appear to share one’s conviction that our culture desperately needs ways to talk about becoming a more humane society—that struggle seems impossible when one of the dialogue partners refuses to occupy that common ground, that shared dialogic space.

When people already have all the answers (and some Christians persist in thinking this way), there is no point in dialoguing. From the standpoint of the catechizer, conversation becomes an act of imparting nuggets of truth to the poor soul who needs those nuggets. It is not an exchange in which each dialogue partner offers insights from her own life experience, in a shared journey towards a truth that transcends both conversationalists.

And for those who have all Truth in their hands and are intent on dispensing nuggets of The Truth to the rest of us, it is fatally simple to arrive at an imagination of one’s dialogue partner as fundamentally defective. In my “dialogues” with my co-religionists at the NCR café, I find myself continuously up against the brick wall of others’ definition of me as less than human.

Again, this is the persistent experience of gay human beings in relation to the church. The churches, at their best, imagine us as rather pitiful objects of charity, who need those nuggets of truth to make us more stalwart followers of the Lord. If only we could understand that there is a plan for the world, God’s plan, and that it’s premised on getting everything in its place: men here, women there; male and female God created them; men as guardians and protectors, women as homebodies and cheerfully obedient servants. If only we could understand the basic plumbing of human sexuality, that everything fits in its proper place—at least, from God’s perspective.

How simple life would be for us poor misguided gay souls, and for the church itself, if people would just understand The Truth, remain in their places, cooperate and believe—and submit and obey.

This is the approach of some of my co-religionists with whom I have sought to talk about our shared interest in a more humane society. It is an approach that demeans me, an approach that—ultimately—reduces me to silence by reducing me to an object, something these conversation partners imagine, rather than a complex human being with human depth, intense human feelings, human questions.

It is so easy to “place” the other when we imagine him as Other, when we reduce her to a stereotype, to an object. And placing the Other is what Christianity seems all about, in the application of its truest adherents today.

In taking that path, the churches are forfeiting the chance to become real agents of change in postmodern culture. In taking the path of making placement of the Other the central task of Christianity, the churches forfeit the claim to be places of a welcome that makes any real difference in the lives of their members, places in which real transfiguration of the ordinary and every day occurs.

In taking this path, the churches cause many LGBT persons simply to shrug our shoulders and reject the language of spirituality altogether, because that language has become so tainted with disdain for our gay humanity that it is toxic for us.

And meanwhile, the task of creating truly welcoming spaces in our culture continues: today’s New York times reports on a boy, Billy Wolfe, who is being bullied on an ongoing basis in a school in Fayetteville in my state (see www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?th&emc=th). This is a school system in which, a decade ago, William Wagner was bullied for being gay, and beaten so viciously that he still suffers from the aftermath of that beating.

Not much seems to have changed in a decade. Though Billy Wolfe is not gay, his attackers—who have now assaulted him repeatedly—use the gay tag as an excuse to assault him. The NY Times reports that one of the bullies created a Facebook site several years ago entitled “Every One That Hates Billy Wolfe,” on which a picture of Peter Pan was superimposed over Billy’s face, with the statement, “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

This is a persistent problem in American schools. It should not be happening. The pattern repeats itself over and over: a boy is identified as gay or gender-inappropriate, or he himself identifies as gay. He is then assaulted. The response of the school system and of parents is all too often faint-hearted. Sometimes the boy himself is blamed for “causing” the bullying.

The violence escalates. The beatings continue. Murder is sometimes the outcome.

This must not happen again. The churches lose all credibility when they provide the conditions for such violence in any shape, form, or fashion. The churches in places where such school bullying occurs must stand against violence and for acceptance. Churches that take seriously and live the Easter message must commit themselves to becoming welcoming places in which social divisions are healed and social wounds are staunched.

If the Easter message means anything at all, it has to mean that Lawrence King did not die in vain. Churches, are you listening?

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And for those of us who stand outside, but still sing Easter songs, an anthem for this Eastertide, Labi Siffre singing his powerful "Something Inside So Strong":
www.youtube.com/watch?v=otuwNwsqHmQ&feature=related.