GLSEN on Bullying of Gay Youths: Worse Where Education Levels Are Low

And last but not least today: the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has just issued a media release about an important GLSEN study showing that LGBT teens are more likely to experience hostility and harassment in schools in rural communities and those marked by poverty and low adult educational rates than in urban areas and communities with higher education levels.

I've noted previously on this blog that, in my view, gay activists in major urban areas need to pay more attention to the lives and experiences of those of us who do not live in places in which laws and social attitudes curb overt anti-gay hostility and discrimination. In my view, it's particularly imperative that the needs of gay young people in rural parts of the country receive more attention from gay leaders in the U.S.

I'm not in the least surprised to find that GLSEN has discovered a correlation between lack of high adult education levels in various communities, and the harassment that gay teens experience in the schools of those communities. To me, it seems intuitively obvious that much of the overt homophobia displayed towards gay family members, gay citizens, and--saddest of all--gay young people in some parts of the country has to do with lack of education. And where education levels are low, there's also likely to be poverty to compound the problem.

I've also noted on this blog my concern as an educator regarding the role colleges and universities need to be playing in educating students--and, in particular, teachers-to-be--to combat such discrimination when they enter the workforce. As it happens, many of the communities with the lowest levels of adult education and the highest levels of poverty in which gay teens experience significant harassment in schools also happen to be in my part of the nation, the bible belt of the American Southeast.

Many of the schools and colleges in my part of the nation are church-sponsored. And many of them have a deplorable track-record when it comes to educating students to understand and deal with issues of sexual difference. They are part of the problem and not part of the solution, vis-a-vis harassment of gay teens.

I've taught in colleges and universities in Florida, Arkansas, and North Carolina, and have seen manifest, ugly homophobia in the institutions in which I taught in these areas. In several of them, I saw people fired simply because they were gay or lesbian. And as I have noted, I myself was punished in a Methodist-owned university in Florida when I was asked to coordinate a program to compile resources for faculty and students engaged in social action projects, and when I added GLSEN to the list of resources. I was told that encouraging students and faculty of this Methodist school to look at issues of harassment of gay youth was putting my "lifestyle" in the face of the campus community.

And as long as the churches that sponsor these schools and the national and regional accrediting bodies that oversee them permit them to get away with overt discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation (often, while they claim religious exemption) and with using discriminatory norms in hiring and firing employees, not much is going to change. The Southern Association of Colleges and Universities (SACS) needs to be much more vigilant about discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation among the colleges and universities it oversees--including the many church-owned institutions in its bailiwick.

So does the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which, though it has rubrics forbidding discrimination among accredited teacher education schools, does little to enforce those rubrics. Until we come to terms with the role higher education plays in sustaining homophobia in some regions of this nation, we will not solve the problem of gay-bashing in our school system.

And it needs desperately to be solved.

(For those who have experienced discrimination at a SACS-accredited institution, a reminder that, as one of its schools comes up for re-accreditation, SACS invites formal third-party comments about the school. If you can document a school's discriminatory behavior or failure to conform to SACS accrediting standards in other areas, I encourage you to take advantage of your legal right to file a third-party statement here. I certainly intend to take advantage of my own legal right to do so, when the two SACS schools at which I experienced discrimination and saw flagrant violation of accrediting standards come up for re-accreditation.)

H/t to Pam's House Blend for information about the GLSEN study.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on GLSEN Day of Silence

On 25 March, I reported on this blog (here) that the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan met on 23 March with representatives of Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), an organization devoted to challenging homophobia in American schools. GLSEN sponsors the annual Day of Silence to combat school bullying based on sexual orientation. This year’s Day of Silence was held on 17 April.

I’m now pleased to read a report by Jenna Lowenstein at 365Gay (here) noting that Arne Duncan mentioned the Day of Silence on his Education Department blog (here) on 17 April. Mr. Duncan’s blog states,

Yesterday, many Americans paused to remember the senseless death of 32 students at Virginia Tech in 2007. Today, many Americans will honor the Day of Silence called for on behalf of victims of harassment and bullying around issues of sexual orientation, including a recent suicide who would have turned 12 today.

As Jenna Lowenstein reports, Secretary Duncan’s decision to make note of the Day of Silence on his blog is significant, since he is the first Secretary of Education to acknowledge this annual event.

As I’ve noted in a number of previous postings, I have a strong interest in this topic as an educator who has worked in church-sponsored universities with an historic commitment to preparing future teachers. I’ve also noted (here) that I was punished at a United Methodist-owned university for even mentioning GLSEN in a list of many organizations that faculty and students interested in civic engagement might consider studying.

As the Bilgrimage posting to which I’ve just linked, along with many other postings on this blog, notes, universities can and should play a key role in combating school bullying and prejudice based on sexual orientation in American classrooms. They can do so by preparing teachers who understand the mechanisms of discrimination, who are committed to opposing prejudice, and who are proactive about preventing bullying based on sexual orientation.

Church-related institutions should be leading the way here. Sadly, they are often not doing so. Instead, as Martin Luther King noted re: churches in the American South during the Civil Rights struggle, they are functioning as the taillight of necessary social change, rather than the prophetic headlight.

It’s time for our church-related universities to stop promoting homophobic prejudice. The new Secretary of Education is pointing the way, and universities that produce teachers for the American classroom—including church-owned ones—would do well to follow his lead.

The Continuing Challenge of Combating Bullying of LGBT Students: GLSEN's 2009 Day of Silence

I know that all broken bones heal, all bleeding stops, all bruises fade, but a wound that has deflated your self esteem never fully heals"

- Andrew W., age 13 - Vorhees NJ*

GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) has announced today (here) that Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and 33 co-sponsors have introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to recognize and support GLSEN’s annual Day of Silence on 17 April. The Day of Silence calls on schools to combat name-calling and bullying of LGBT students.

As the GLSEN press release about the Day of Silence notes,

Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2%) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1%) reported being physically harassed and about a quarter (22.1%) reported being physically assaulted, according to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.

As GLSEN’s resource materials note, it is very important that colleges and universities prepare future teachers to deal with the challenge of bullying of gay and lesbian youth in classrooms, on playgrounds, and in our schools in general. I’m convinced that one important way to do this is to take advantage of the shift that various polls show now underway among American youth regarding the place of gay and lesbian people in society. There is growing acceptance among American youth of gay and lesbian people.

Colleges and universities that hope to educate the youth of this generation well, to retain students, and to move them to graduation, are wise to develop freshman programs (e.g., freshman colleges) that capitalize on the social awareness of students, and make that awareness asignificant part of their educational experience. Studies show that colleges and universities with well-run freshman programs (often called freshman colleges on many campuses) centered on learning communities and geared to civic engagement have a better chance of moving students to graduation than do colleges and universities that ignore the unique needs of entering students, and/or refuse to engage those students in projects of positive social engagement and in dialogue about those projects.

I’ve long been struck by the approach of the prophetic founder of Bethune-University, Mary McLeod Bethune, to the responsibilities of educators. Dr. Bethune once stated that she never passed a young African-American girl in the streets without thinking to herself that this little girl might one day be Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune placed herself in the shoes of the students she taught, and drew forth from them the best they had to give, engaging them in the social and cultural world in which they lived, and building on that engagement to bring them into the world of higher education. She put her students above her own ego needs and reputation as the leader of an educational institution, and in doing so, she became a powerful educational figure and world leader.

There is still, unfortunately, resistance to the extremely important goals of groups like GLSEN in some church-related institutions of higher learning. As I’ve noted on this blog, I had an unfortunate experience in the past when I was asked to lead a faculty project to train students in civic engagement at a United Methodist university. When I recommended GLSEN among many other organizations working for progressive change in a variety of areas, my supervisor informed me that I had put my “lifestyle” in the face of the campus community by this recommendation. I was punished for suggesting to the faculty I was leading that bullying of gay and lesbian students in schools was a valid concern for the students we were teaching at our church-related university, even though the body that accredits the teacher education program of the school requires that prospective teachers address these issues and that the faculty model diversity and inclusion.

This needs to stop, this resistance to the inclusion of gay and lesbian people in our world, on the part of churches and church-related schools. It needs to stop because, as the GLSEN report cited above notes, bullying of children who are perceived to be gay or lesbian hasn’t stopped in our schools. As long as such bullying continues, educators (and churches and church folks) need to be concerned about it.

*From the January 2009 annual GLSEN No-Name Calling Week Creative Expression Contest.

Sea-Change in Approach to Anti-Gay Bullying: New Education Secretary Meets with GLSEN

As my set of interests in the profile section of this blog indicates, I have a strong concern to stop bullying of LGBT youth in schools. I’ve blogged repeatedly about that concern. I’ve also noted how, when as an academic administrator in a university, I was given an assignment of leading faculty in a project to encourage the civic engagement of students, I was punished for recommending GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) as one resource among many that faculty might study as they guided students in civic engagement projects (here).

I was told that mentioning this organization as one among many others from which faculty and students might learn as they dealt with community problems was “putting my lifestyle in the face” of the campus community. This took place in a Methodist university that proclaims to be concerned about healing social wounds and challenging social divisions, in line with the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church. When I told my supervisor, in response to her statement about my “lifestyle,” that I have a life and not a lifestyle, I incurred even more serious punishment.

This is a school whose Education Department is required by its accrediting body to teach prospective teachers to combat anti-gay discrimination, and to model respect for diversity in its own faculty. It also happens to be a school that has no written public policy forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

Because of my interest in combating bullying of gay students in schools, and because of my own history with this topic, I am very happy to read that the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan met with GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard earlier this week (here). Byard was accompanied by students and teachers interested in stopping bullying of LGBT youth in schools.

This was an historic meeting. It is the first time a Secretary of Education has met with LGBT advocates. The Bush administration rejected calls for such meetings.

Eliza Byard reports that Secretary Duncan listened compassionately to the testimony of students who have been bullied due to their sexual orientation, and committed himself to making schools safe for all students, regardless of sexual orientation. He also expressed interest in finding ways to combat anti-gay bullying, and requested information about interventions that have been tried by GLSEN and other groups.

For those interested in hearing recent first-hand testimony by a high-school student who has experienced bullying in school due to his sexual orientation, I recommend the testimony of 17-year old James Neilly of Charlotte, Vermont (here), at the Vermont Senate hearing last week as that body deliberated on a same-sex marriage bill (it passed the Senate by a vote of 26-4). Neilly speaks about how locker-room bullying due to his sexual orientation evoked a “ripping, nagging feeling that I am inferior.”

No young person should be made to feel that way in our schools. It continues to appall me that any university owned by a church which professes to decry prejudice against gay human beings lacks policies forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and punishes academic leaders who encourage faculty to consider organizations devoted to ending bullying of gay students, among other organizations promoting constructive social change, as faculty study civic engagement project for students.

Targeting Youth with Anti-Gay Lies: Alliance Defense Fund, Exodus International, and the Day of Truth

Early in January, I blogged about how we can expect the religious right to bombard youth with anti-gay propaganda in the coming year, in an attempt to stem the demographic tide of young folks moving towards acceptance and affirmation of gay persons, and away from demonization and hate (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/01/obamas-election-and-rise-of-hate-groups.html). I said,

Look for the religious right to try desperately to represent itself as a kinder, gentler version of its old self, as it crafts new strategies of outreach to youth: campus visits, campus crusades, enhanced web technologies. And newly minted lies about gays and gay marriage . . . .

It's started. Yesterday, Daniel Gonzales reported at Box Turtle Bulletin that the homophobic Alliance Defense Fund, which opposes the annual national Day of Silence sponsored by Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), has turned over its annual Day of Truth, a counter to the Day of Silence, to Exodus International (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/22/8276).

The Day of Silence is an attempt to make students at all levels aware of the damages we inflict when we taunt gay young people, call them demeaning names, and turn them into second-class citizens in our schools. Exodus International assaults gay persons with spurious claims about the abnormality and unhealthiness of a gay sexual orientation, and with false promises that one can change one's sexual orientation.

Exodus International lies, in short. We can now expect its lies about gay human beings and gay lives to be disseminated to school children through the Day of Truth.

And, as a reminder of the power these lies about gay lives and gay persons continue to exert even in institutions of higher learning, I'd like to note once again the response I received from the president of a church-owned university when I recommended GLSEN to colleagues in a project I was charged to lead. The project required me to help all the academic leaders of the university to enhance the engagement of students in service-learning.

One of my responsibilities in this project was to compile lists of groups with which students might want to work for progressive social change. When I mentioned GLSEN, among many other organizations that engage student passion for social change, I was reprimanded by the university president, who told me that the inclusion of GLSEN in the list was a way of putting my "lifestyle" in the face of colleagues.

We have long way to go.

If Today You Hear (Again)

So, that other small epiphany about which I promised yesterday to post today.

It may seem tiny to anyone else. But it felt big to me.

My nephews Colin and Patrick came over several days ago with their friend Eric. It was right at suppertime (the arrival time was probably not happenstance). I had some cold roasted chicken left from the weekend, which I quickly deboned and mixed into chicken salad surrounded by a ring of three-bean salad and macaroni—also leftovers. Also had collard greens and macaroni and cheese from Sunday’s dinner, a slice or two of chess pie, some vanilla pudding with plum sauce, a cucumber or two, potato salad: food fit for growing young men who had been playing basketball all afternoon, after they got off from work at one of my brother’s restaurants.

I mention all the food to situate the epiphany. As I noted in a blog posting some weeks ago, I contend (following Teresa of Avila) that God speaks to us frequently entre los cucheros—among the pots and pans, right in the midst of the humdrum detritus of our daily existence.

As Colin, Eric, and Patrick tucked in, it hit me: they have a generational ease, a total lack of self-consciousness, in interacting across racial lines, that is well-nigh impossible in my generation. Have I mentioned that Eric is African-American?

The supper-table banter included jostling (from Eric’s side) about Pat and Colin’s slave-holding ancestors, ribbing from Patrick and Colin about Eric’s “Big Daddy” t-shirt. I held my breath through it all, wondering whose toes might be stepped on, what comment might be an insulting crossing of an invisible line.

Because that is how it is with my generation. We cannot get over the “fact” of black and white, even when we know perfectly well in our heads that this “fact” is not a fact at all, but a social construction of reality. Skin color is something society has taught us to notice, to use to classify each other as higher and lower, in and out. This system of classification has been with us so long, it almost appears natural and God-given, even though many of us are well aware that there is no such thing, genetically, as race: we all spring from the same genetic roots.

It is as bizarre and capricious to classify people according to the pigment of their skins as it would be to sort human beings by foot size or nose length. Classifying people by race is arbitrary, a social choice to raise to the level of consciousness a difference that, without careful tutelage, we would perhaps simply notice and then dismiss, as we interact as human beings with other human beings.

The epiphany: if each generation chooses to leave behind at least a tiny portion of the garbage of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, etc., then perhaps the world will, eventually, work towards a more inclusive human community.

I’m not a fool, at least not entirely and not every day. I am well aware that there are almost insuperable obstacles to overcoming prejudice. I know that the process of leaving the garbage on the dump heap of history is not automatic: it requires education. It demands that we teach our youth, at home, in church, at school, to stop hating and start loving, to consider the Other as one of us.

And I know that we do a dismal job of educating the heart. I have read on the internet today that the Lexington-Richmond school district of South Carolina remains in uproar over a request by students to form a Gay-Straight Alliance club at a school in the district. The students will now be permitted to form such a club, but over the fierce opposition of many parents.

And this two years after the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) released a study showing that over a third of gay and lesbian students in American schools report physical harassment due to their sexual orientation . . . .

We have a long, long path to follow, to overcome such hatred. The path towards educating our hearts and souls to build a more humane society is a long one, and educators are not always willing to lead the way.

I know. I have worked in church-affiliated colleges and universities whose education departments are dominated by folks who mouth tolerance, but who practice homophobia—who are willing to wallow in every stereotype they can find to marginalize gay colleagues and gay students. I have worked with heads of education faculties from places like South Carolina (and Arkansas, it goes without saying) who have no commitment whatsoever to educating for tolerance and against homophobia. I have worked with university faculty in education departments who are preachers' daughters from places like Tennessee, who regard themselves as tolerant and inclusive while using homophobia to score political points with those leading the university.

I have worked in a church-affiliated institution whose leader informed me that, in even mentioning GLSEN as a resource for faculty, I was shoving my "lifestyle" into the faces of my colleagues. This leader professes to love gay people and to work for our inclusion in church and society . . . .

We have to educate ourselves before we can educate our youth.

Still, the conversation I witnessed several days ago between my nephews and their friend Eric gives me cause to hope. Just as Colin and Patrick are tone-deaf to homophobic prejudice, they simply do not think in the racial terms that dominate the imagination of my generation—of both black and white folks of my generation. Those who say that the surge of support by young voters for Obama reflects a diminishing level of racism in the United States are certainly correct, if what I see in my nephews’ lives is any indication.

And this is cause for hope. If, in my lifetime, I have seen my own part of the country move from having separate water fountains, separate restrooms, separate but “equal” (not!) schools, to integration, to the beginning of a post-racial society, then the movement from one generation to the other can provide reason for hope—when education attends that movement.

In his work to create an ethic of the land, philosopher Aldo Leopold argues that human societies extend rights to groups previously deprived of rights through a process of social evolution (attended, spurred, by education and consciousness-raising) in which a society begins to regard as persons those previously regarded as objects. The extension of human rights, the growth of participatory democracy, depends on the constantly developing awareness of social groups that previously marginalized groups of persons are not objects to use and abuse, but persons to treat with dignity.

It was such a breakthrough of awareness of the personhood of enslaved human beings that led to the abolition of slavery. The same breakthrough of awareness led to the gradual extension of human rights, including the right to vote, to women.

Societies that wish to claim the title of humane societies—societies that purport to be democratic—have no choice except to keep scanning the social horizon, seeking to identify those now regarded and treated as objects, with the intent to bring these objectified human beings to the table of participatory democracy, give them a voice, and allow that voice to count.

There is no other way to a humane future.

And our churches should be leading that way as the headlight of the process, and not following it, as the taillight, as Martin Luther King, Jr. noted.

Remembering Larry: National Day of Silence

Today is the national day of silence to combat bullying of LGBT youth in American schools. This year’s event centers on remembrance of Lawrence King, a fifteen-year old gay youth murdered in February by a classmate in their Oxnard, CA, middle school (www.rememberinglawrence.org).

In recognition of this day of silence, and in memory of Lawrence King, I would like to offer the following quotation from Mary Doria Russell’s book A Thread of Grace (NY: Ballantine, 2005):

The Holy One has made us His partners, the sages teach. He gives us wheat, we make bread. He gives us grapes, we make wine. He gives us the world. We make of it what we will—all of us together. When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty. Bombs do not drop from God’s hand. Triggers are not pulled by God’s finger. Each of us chooses, one by one, and God’s eye does not turn from those who suffer or those who inflict the suffering. Our choices are weighed. And, thus, the nations are judged (pp. 158-9).

“God’s eye does not turn from those who suffer or those who inflict the suffering”: this is an affirmation of Judaeo-Christian faith that I find almost impossible to believe. The world in which we live is so full of suffering, so much of it unmerited suffering inflicted on one human being by another human being, that it becomes a daring act of faith to believe that God sees, God hears, and God cares.

And yet we must believe this, if the world is to make any sense at all. And believing, we commit ourselves to making a difference, no matter how difficult the struggle against silence, ignorance, malice, the human propensity to dehumanize those who are Other.

Larry King, requiescat in pace. Your life has made and continues to make an incalculable difference.

Breaking Silence, Rolling the Stone Away

I’m thinking about silence today. My email this morning contains an announcement from Ashon Crawley of Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) regarding the National Day of Silence that will be observed in American schools this year on 25 April in memory of Lawrence King.

This annual GLSEN-sponsored observance is an effort to address school bullying, particularly violence in schools fueled by prejudice against those tagged as LGBT or gender-inappropriate. As I’ve noted before on this blog, in conjunction with the LOGO network, GLSEN has produced an important video announcement about this year’s National Day of Silence and Lawrence King’s murder. For those who haven’t yet viewed this resource, it’s at www.dayofsilence.org/content/video.html.

Ashon Crawley’s email announcement notes that silence takes many forms. It can be the kind of silence that is golden, the moment when we let out a deep breath and relax to take in the beauty of a landscape.

Alternatively, silence can be the deformative silence that is imposed on persons and groups of people by those who do not wish to hear the words a person or a group needs to speak in order to assert humanity, or to combat social norms that deform the person or group. As Crawley notes,

But there are times when silence is not sweet, times when silence isn’t chosen but when it is forced upon us. There are instances when silence bespeaks unhappiness. When a person or group is silenced, the choice to speak is stolen. Silencing of others is an act of coercion, making tangible inequitable distributions of power. So though there may be times when silence is golden, there are many other instances when silence is traumatic and terrifying. LGBTQ people are quite familiar with being silenced: having our lives questioned to the point that we fatigue from speaking; sometimes, literally lacking the words that convey our sense of being to the world; instances where our voices are effectively cut out of conversations.

LGBTQ people are quite familiar with being silenced. We are indeed. I’ve reported on this thread that at my last position as a professional educator in a church-based university, I was charged with the task of leading the faculty in developing a curriculum centered around civic engagement and social transformation.

In that capacity, I mentioned—on a single occasion—that GLSEN’s educational initiatives (among many other initiatives of other organizations addressing social problems) might be a resource for faculty to consider. I did so because the locale in which I was working was one in which violence against both homeless people and youth identified as gender-inappropriate was reaching epidemic proportions, both in schools and outside the school grounds.

Merely for mentioning GLSEN as a possible resource in the project I was charged to lead, I was severely punished. I was told to be silent. I was told I had “put my lifestyle into the face of colleagues.” LGBTQ people are quite familiar with being silenced, indeed.

This is silence that is intended to dehumanize those on whom it is imposed, to suggest that our humanity is less than that of those who are allowed to speak and to define social reality for themselves and the rest of us. It is the silence that is intended to keep our stories from being heard, because in coming to know us as human beings, others may come to see that our humanity is not inferior to theirs—that we offer another way to be human in a world that desperately needs many different models of humanity to match the diversity of the world’s population.

Silence never truly silences those who are oppressed—not when we continue to think, cherish our humanity against the blows of those trying to diminish it, love and dream. As Labi Siffre’s powerful anthem of liberation to which I linked in yesterday’s blog, “Something Inside So Strong,” says,

The more you refuse to hear my voice
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time
You squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine so brightly
It will blind you
‘Cause there's......

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it

This is the hope of the resurrection. This is the central message of the resurrection. Every power in the world in which Jesus lived sought to silence him, because his message that the reign of God had broken into the world was intolerable for those controlling the world in which he lived. This message of God’s preferential love for those on the margins, for prostitutes, for social outcasts, for the poor and the downtrodden, was unacceptable to those who profited from things as they were.

As a result, the powers that be in Jesus’s world sought to silence him definitively. They hung him on a cross and watched him breathe his last. They placed him in a tomb, and rolled a rock across the entrance. They left him there in a silence that, in their expectation, would be forever.

The Easter message is that Jesus remains alive beyond all attempts to silence and humiliate him, all attempts to stand athwart history and say “stop!” to movements of hope and progressive change. Far from silencing him, those who humiliated him by consigning him to the lowly fate of a common criminal made his voice louder, strong, universal.

I am not among those Christians who believe that only in Jesus is the voice of the divine accessible to the world. In my view, there are many ways to hear that voice, and followers of Jesus stand to gain much by listening for the voice of God in religious traditions other than their own—and in the lives and witness of those who may repudiate religion altogether, given their experience of the demonic face of religious groups, a face that every religion is capable of displaying.

I use the theological language of Christianity, of death and resurrection, of hope premised on this pivotal event in human history, because I grew up within a Christian culture, and that culture forms the framework of my religious imagination. In using this language, I make no claim that it is the unique, solitary way of talking about the intrusion of the divine into human history. To make such a claim would be to deny what is evident to anyone with eyes to see: that God manifests Godself in the world in many different ways, through many different religious traditions, and that, at the same time that religious communities across the globe sometimes show demonic faces to the world, all religious communities are also capable of being vehicles of salvation.

In my own Christian-framed religious imagination, part of the message of the resurrection is that one lives now as if the reign of God to which Jesus pointed—and for proclaiming which he was put to death—is already breaking forth in human history. Because of our witness to the resurrectional force of Jesus’s life and message, we live now as if the world has begun to change significantly, even when we recognize that our hopes point to dreams that have not yet come to pass.

We live for a more humane world at the same time that we are painfully aware that this world does not yet exist. We commit ourselves to making that world evident in our lives, to creating the conditions for making that world possible in the lives of others. We try to live as Rilke encouraged the aspiring poet to live in his Letters to a Young Poet: “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

It is against this backdrop of the already here but not yet, of crucifixion-resurrection, that I keep seeking to address the social problems that reach my own tiny life, that call forth a concern in my own shriveled heart. It is against this backdrop that I struggle to keep talking in a world that seeks to silence those who speak from the margins, who insist on saying what others do not want to have said.

Only when such discourse can find a way to make itself heard beyond the margins, will the world will ever truly change for the better. As Ashon Crawley’s reflections suggest—as the National Day of Silence indicates—silence about school bullying and its root causes only reinforces the violence that will continue to repeat itself in our schools, unless we find ways to talk, to break silence.

Interestingly enough, after the New York Times posted its article yesterday about the bullying of Billy Wolfe in the Fayetteville, AR, school system, a blog discussion of this story developed on the website of the statewide free newspaper, Arkansas Times. This discussion was fascinating—more for what bloggers did not want to say or discuss, than for what they actually said.

The discussion began with a blogger reporting that he himself was bullied in an Arkansas school in the 1950s. Predictably, those bullying him tagged him as a “fag,” though he is heterosexual. Building on that account, another blogger noted that the same theme is present in the story of Billy Wolfe: though he identifies himself as straight, the Facebook site set up by his bullies (to which I referred in yesterday’s blog) refers to Billy Wolfe as “a little bitch” and a homosexual that no one likes.”

This theme of identifying boys as gay, and then abusing him because they are gay, is omnipresent in patterns of school bullying in American schools. We cannot address—we cannot solve—the problem of school bullying, without confronting this issue head on. In order to address school bullying, our schools have to address homophobia.

And yet, they do not want to go there. The churches do not want them to go there. Parents influenced by the churches often fight tooth and nail to keep any discussion of these issues out of our schools.

The blogger who brought up the omnipresent pattern of homophobia underlying bullying of boys in our schools was met by silence yesterday, on the Arkansas Times blog. Though discussion of the Billy Wolfe story continued throughout the day, other bloggers obviously did not wish to engage the homophobia issue.

This is the sadly typical response to analysis of school bullying as homophobia-incited: silence. Until we break this silence and move beyond it, until we discuss these issues honestly and openly, we will not resolve the problem of school bullying. And that means that more youth will be bullied in American schools. It means, sadly, that we are likely to see more incidents such as the Lawrence King incident in the future.

And, in a country that historian Martin Marty has called “a nation with the soul of a church,” there is no way to discuss the endemic problem of school bullying premised on homophobia without engaging the churches in the discussion. The churches are at the heart of the problem.

As a fine blog posting on the Bilerico Project website last week—Terrance Heath’s “Apology Accepted”—notes, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of American (ELCA) recently issued an apology to the LGBT community for the way in which historic Lutheran teachings have been used to wound, rather than welcome, gay people (see www.bilerico.com/2008/03/apology_accepted.php).

But as Heath also notes, the very way in which the announcement is framed—as part of a validation of the historic teaching that the only acceptable form of marriage is between one man and one woman—continues the wounding and unwelcoming process. Heath insightfully focuses on the way in which Christian teachings about marriage, and about the “natural” order of human sexuality, implicitly diminish the full humanity of gay human beings:

[B]eing gay means that I have to expect less and accept less from life. Being gay means I deserve less from life. I don’t deserve love, I don’t deserve family . . . . Of course that means understanding that as queers we must accept less and expect less from life than our heterosexual brothers and sisters, because we are less than our heterosexual brothers and sisters.

Churches cannot become welcoming spaces for LGBT persons as long as their teachings frame gay humanity as somehow less than the full humanity of straight human beings. And the problem of violent assaults on young people tagged as gay or gender-inappropriate will not be successfully addressed until the churches examine their own homophobia, and call on their members to cope with the homophobia that is inside all of us and is all-pervasive in American life.

There is hope. In this Easter season, I celebrate the prophetic witness of people like Sister Jeanine Gramick, on whom a Clerical Whispers blog posting focused last week (see http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/03/supporters-of-latin-mass-will-use.html).

Jeanine Gramick has been a longstanding fighter for gay rights in the Catholic church. She has suffered for standing up and speaking out. The Vatican has sought to silence her. Fortunately, it has not succeeded.

As Jeanine Gramick notes, her conscience does not permit her to remain silent. As the Clerical Whispers interview notes, Jeanine Gramick agrees with the observation of a Catholic bishops’ conference which says, "Prejudice against homosexuals is a greater infringement on the moral norm than any kind of sexual activity.”

Yet Jeanine Gramick wants to push the conversation further. As she notes: “Well, let's put this into practice. Instead of the Vatican making all these pronouncements about homosexual activity, let's make the pronouncement about the evils of prejudice and violence against the gay community. That's what we should be teaching."

Amen. Thank God for those who refuse to remain silent when the powers that be choose to silence them. Thank God for those like Jeanine Gramick, who choose to speak truth to power within the churches in which they remain active.

Lawrence King: Resources for Remembering and Actng

Time moves on. It has been one month since Lawrence King was murdered.

The resolve of the world community to remember, and to act in remembrance of, this young life cut far too short, remains strong. Yesterday, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education (GLSEN) network released a public service announcement in remembrance of Lawrence King: http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/2277.html.

The announcement calls on us to work to eradicate hate from our schools. It challenges us to make the murder of any child identified as gay in any school unthinkable.

GLSEN’s website links to rich resources for educators seeking to address school bullying, particularly of children identified as gender-inappropriate. Among these resources is an enlightening article providing new details of events preceding the murder of Lawrence King. Paul Pringle and Catherine Saillant’s “Taunts, Family Lives Emerging as Factors in Gay Teen’s Killing” (http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_8512111) notes that Larry had been routinely tormented in school even before he identified himself to others as gay:

The anti-gay taunts and slurs that Larry endured from his male peers apparently had been constant, as routine for him as math lessons and recess bells. The stinging words were isolating. As friend Melissa Reza, 15, put it, Larry lived much of his life "toward the side ... he was always toward the side."

She and others recall that the name-calling had begun long before he told his small circle of confidants that he was gay, before problems at home made him a ward of the court and before he summoned the courage to further assert his sexual orientation by wearing makeup and girls' boots with his school uniform.

This information is important for “mainstream” America to hear. It is already apparent that the murder of Larry King will be framed in some circles as a gay-panic murder: that is, it will be claimed that Larry King “hit on” the boys who taunted him, and that violence ensued as a result of his flirting.

For that reason, it’s extremely important for the mainstream media, for parents, educators, and churches, to hear what Pringle and Saillant are reporting: Larry King was already being tormented even before he came out as a gay youngster. Larry turned to “flirting” in self-defense, as a way of countering the taunts. He was pushed by his tormentors to a point at which he sought to turn the tables by “flirting.”

It would be grotesque if this all-too-common story is dismissed as a tale of deserved punishment, as a morality narrative about how a gay boy who flirts with other boys gets his just desserts. Of course, given the heinousness of this crime, no one will make that text explicit. And it goes without saying that the fourteen-year old boy, Brandon McInerney, who shot Larry King deserves compassion. McInerney is, in many ways, himself a victim--of a disturbed family life; of a culture that links machismo to violence, and which suggests that the appropriate response to another male who exhibits "feminine" characteristics is violent assault.

To say this, however, is not to justify the subtextual gay-panic discourse already lurking in some media accounts of Lawrence King’s murder.

The churches, our schools, and the media, must honor Lawrence King’s memory by examining far more closely what actually goes on in our schools. The real narrative that must not be missed here is one of undeserved torment of countless youngsters identified as gay by their peers, who have nowhere to turn when this happens. The true story is a story of parents, school officials, and churches turning a blind eye to bullying of children deemed gender-inappropriate.

In behaving in this fashion, churches, schools, and the media become facilitators of violence, collaborators in hate. It is time for this collaboration to stop.

As an educator and theologian who was punished in the past year for citing GLSEN in a single meeting of faculty leaders in a church-based institution of higher learning, I call on all churches, all teachers, all schools, to think more carefully about what goes on in the lives of children taunted for being gay. I challenge the churches to make hate rhetoric and hateful actions premised on homophobic prejudice unthinkable.

I urge churches which sponsor schools that train teachers for American classrooms to address this serious social problem pro-actively, appropriately. In choosing faculty for your education programs, make a strong commitment to educating for diversity a key characteristic of the faculty you recruit. Do not aid and abet homophobia by turning a blind eye to instances of homophobic prejudice among your own faculty, among your administrators, among the church officials who sit on your boards.

Do not punish faculty and faculty leaders who call for open dialogue about the destructiveness of homophobic violence. Do not reward faculty who use homophobia to undermine or silence faculty leaders who try to promote such dialogue.

In behaving in this way, you undercut the social justice statements of the churches that sponsor your colleges and universities. In behaving in this way, you become part of the dynamic that issues in violence against gay youth. In behaving in this way, you make null and void statements such as the declaration of the United Methodist Social Principles, "We support efforts to stop violence and other forms of coercion against gays and lesbians."

No other American child needs to meet the fate of Lawrence King. We can stop this violence. It will not be stopped until we decide to make it unthinkable: the key to ending this violence is in our own hands. We simply have to commit ourselves to end it.

Teaching Youth Not to Hate

News today that the American Family Association has announced a boycott of the April 25 “Day of Silence” being promoted by GLSEN—Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (see www.afa.net/). GLSEN organizes this event each year to enhance awareness in American classrooms of the prejudice endured by those who are gay and lesbian.

One of GLSEN’s primary objectives is to address the deeply troubling phenomenon of bullying of LGBT youth in American schools. This year’s Day of Silence observance is being organized in memory of fifteen-year old Lawrence King.

As the murder of this gay youth illustrates in the starkest way possible, it is imperative that schools educate our children not to hate. As a video just released by Fight Out Loud—“Hate in 2008 = A Call to Action”—concludes, in 2008, LGBT people are being murdered in the U.S. at the rate of one person every eight days (see www.fightoutloud.org/). And those are only the murders about which we know . . . .

The American Family Association identifies GLSEN as “an activist homosexual group,” despite the fact that, by AFA’s own admission, the GLSEN-sponsored Day of Silence is now observed in thousands of schools around the nation, and despite GLSEN’s status as an organization of highly regarded professional educators from many backgrounds, whose goal is to address school bullying. Shockingly, one of AFA’s action points vs. the Day of Silence is an appeal to supporters to “encourage your church leadership to follow the bold example of Pastor Ken Hutcherson who is vocally opposing ‘Day of Silence’ in his community in Redmond, Washington.”

It was Pastor Hutcherson who stated recently (as a previous posting of mine on this blog recounts) that if another man opened the door for him, he’d rip the man’s arm off and beat him to death with the wet end of the arm.

The AFA’s callous willingness to use children in right-wing political battles runs directly against the direction taken by the nation’s chief teacher accreditation organization, NCATE (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education). NCATE accredits the education schools of colleges and universities according to a set of standards that include the college or university’s commitment to diversity (see www.ncate.org).

As the NCATE standard on diversity (standard #4) states,

One of the goals of this standard is the development of educators who can help all students learn or support their learning through their professional roles in schools. This goal requires educators who can reflect multicultural and global perspectives that draw on the histories, experiences, and representations of students and families from diverse populations. Therefore, the [teacher education] unit has the responsibility to provide opportunities for candidates to understand diversity and equity in the teaching and learning process. . . .Candidates are helped to understand the potential impact of discrimination based on race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and language on students and their learning. Proficiencies related to diversity are identified in the unit’s conceptual framework. They are clear to candidates and are assessed as part of the unit’s assessment system.

NCATE guidelines for standard four note that units of education expecting to receive accreditation must produce teachers capable of understanding and teaching all students. As footnotes to standard four repeatedly state, “‘All students’ includes students with exceptionalities and of different ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, language, religious, socioeconomic, and regional/geographic origins.”

Because of the imperative need for teachers today to reach increasingly diverse populations of students, on 13 November 2007, NCATE issued a call to action emphasizing the importance of teachers’ commitment to social justice. This call to action requires teachers to develop “professional dispositions” that enhance this commitment. NCATE’s call to action emphasizes that well-trained teachers must “understand the impact of discrimination based on race, class, gender, disability/exceptionality, sexual orientation, and language on students and their learning.”

The call to action adds to NCATE accreditation criteria the expectation that teachers exhibit the following Professional Dispositions:

Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support student learning and development.

NCATE expects institutions to assess professional dispositions based on observable behaviors in educational settings . The two professional dispositions that NCATE expects institutions to assess are fairness and the belief that all students can learn. Based on their mission and conceptual framework, professional education units can identify, define, and operationalize additional professional dispositions.

NCATE expects institutions to assess professional dispositions based on observable behaviors in educational settings: this definition underscores that not merely education units or prospective teachers are now expected by NCATE to demonstrate fair and non-discriminatory behavior towards minorities, including LGBT persons. The entire university in which a unit of education is housed is now expected by NCATE to demonstrate such behavior.

The new NCATE social justice dispositions indicate that universities will be accredited based on their university-wide commitment to just and non-discriminatory behavior towards minorities (including LGBT persons)—e.g., presumably in governing statements forbidding discrimination, in policies and procedures that militate against discrimination, in hiring and firing decisions, and so on. NCATE will now examine institutions of higher education to see what “observable behaviors” towards minorities are displayed within an institution, its policies, its faculty, and especially its School of Education.

The murder of Lawrence King and the out-of-control assaults on LGBT citizens today—one person murdered every eight days!—underscore the importance of these educational goals both for American schools and for institutions of higher learning that produce teachers for those schools. As Pam Spaulding notes in her Pam’s House Blend (www.pamshouseblend.com) blog posting discussing the “Hate in 2008 = A Call to Action” video, something needs to be done in communities such as Ft. Lauderdale, where a tax-funded city newsletter by the city’s current mayor Mr. Naugle “spews . . . hate” against gay citizens.

Mr. Naugle has had vocal support from a group of African-American ministers. Pastor Ken Hutcherson is also African American. Yet, as the “Hate in 2008” video demonstrates, African Americans are well-represented among LGBT citizens now being murdered. They include seventeen-year old Simmie Williams, who was murdered recently right in Ft. Lauderdale.

Given this social reality, it is all the more heartening to remember Barack Obama’s several recent outspoken critiques of homophobia in the African-American community and African-American churches. This week’s Towleroad blog contains a video link to the most recent of these, about which I blogged last week—Mr. Obama’s statement to a group of supporters in Beaumont, Texas, that homophobia is not Christian.

There is much work to do in all of our communities. There is certainly much work to do in Florida, given the epidemic level of hate crimes against LGBT citizens of that state. Church-affiliated institutions of higher learning in that state—particularly African-American ones—have a premier opportunity to make a positive faith-based response to this social problem. If they will . . . .

The American Family Association certainly does not deserve the support of such institutions, given its longstanding positions espousing hate, including a statement in its AFA journal following Hurricane Katrina that the hurricane was “[an] instrument of God’s mercy” that “wiped out rampant sin.” One would like to think that something else was at work in the disruption of so many low-income African-American lives in that terrible event!

A Question for Liberal America: If Not Now, When?

Still thinking about the postings on yesterday’s Arkansas Times blog, in response to Mr. Obama’s clarion call for Americans to recognize that equality is a moral imperative when it comes to how the nation treats its gay citizens.

I read on yesterday’s Towleroad blog that Obama spoke out clearly again in Beaumont, Texas. As he addressed a crowd about the evils of discrimination—against people of color, against women—he received loud acclaim. When he included gays and lesbians, the audience fell silent. He then told the crowd that homophobia is unchristian, and got at least a few cheers.

Homophobia: the prejudice that dare not speak its name—as in being identified squarely and unambiguously as prejudice, as discrimination that is just as evil as racial or gender discrimination. It takes courage to name this prejudice in American culture today, particularly when one is a political leader seeking to win a national election. It takes courage for an African-American leader to name this ugly prejudice, since it continues to be far too acceptable among African Americans who rightly decry racial prejudice to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation.

And on today’s Bilerico blog, I read that the vigil to remember African-American gay teen Simmie Williams in Ft. Lauderdale on Wednesday addressed “what many see as a growing war on gay and transgendered people in Florida.” Bilerico’s report calls for a frank, open conversation in Florida and nationwide about homophobic violence:

“It is time that Florida, and all of America, begin to have the conversation about hate-based violence and the terror that hate crimes inflict. We demand that EVERY official from every level of government needs to speak out and say we will not tolerate this violence in our communities.”

Reading that statement leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach—primarily because of the senseless waste of gay youths’ lives, but also because of experiences that I’ve recounted in previous postings. I went to Florida in 2006 to take a job at a United Methodist institution that prides itself on its civic engagement initiatives. I was charged with leading faculty to develop a curriculum to enhance civic engagement on the part of students and faculty.

On one occasion, I made reference to GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) as an organization whose model of civic engagement faculty might wish to examine, as they crafted civic engagement initiatives for students. For citing that organization as one among many models of civic engagement, I was punished, told that I had “put my lifestyle into the face of colleagues.”

It should not be this way. It was evident to me from the time I arrived at this church-based college that there was a real, a serious, problem with homophobia among students and in the community at large. Since the college’s civic engagement curriculum is based on the belief that students must be taught to involve themselves in every social ill found in their community, it never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that a church-based, civic-engagement oriented college would punish faculty leaders who called for open, honest discussion of homophobic violence—or, for that matter, of youth violence against homeless people.

We have a long way to go: Equality is a moral imperative. And even the churches and their educational institutions cannot skirt that moral imperative. Churches fail dismally in their moral responsibility to educate when they remain silent about homophobic violence. Churches make themselves part of the problem and not the solution, when they punish those they empower to deal with social problems, when those punished have sought to include homophobic violence among the social problems to be addressed.

These reflections lead me to wonder again about those bloggers on yesterday’s Arkansas Times forum about Obama’s moral imperative statement. I wonder, in particular, about all the “liberals” across the nation who seem to believe, as quite a few bloggers stated yesterday, that now is not the right time for the nation and its leaders to decry homophobia.

What can they be thinking, I wonder? I’d like to ask these liberals: What precisely is ambiguous to you about that statement, Equality is a moral imperative?

What do you imagine those of us who are gay and living beside you should do? What is your advice to your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Do you want us to stand and wait for the crumbs you are willing to dole out, as you sit at the table and feast?

Is this the best you are willing to offer your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Would you accept this humiliating treatment for yourselves?

Should we simply leave your communities, so that you can live comfortably without confronting your prejudice?

Is this the best you are willing to offer your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Would you accept this humiliating treatment for yourselves?

Should we hide and be silent, or engage in bogus and totally ineffectual conversion therapies, to make you more comfortable?

Is this the best you are willing to offer your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Would you accept this humiliating treatment for yourselves?

Would you prefer that we apologize for being gay, and agree that we deserve only what you are willing to offer us by way of the crumbs of justice, when you decide it is time for us to have those crumbs?

Is this the best you are willing to offer your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Would you accept this humiliating treatment for yourselves?

Would you like for us to stand up and claim our rights, but have you sitting on the sidelines clucking your tongues and saying, “Oh, but now is not the right time”?

Is this the best you are willing to offer your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Would you accept this humiliating treatment for yourselves?

If not now, when, liberals of America—those of you who profess to value tolerance, those of you churchgoers who claim to have open hearts, open minds, and open doors?

For those denied justice, for those whose basic human rights are being trampled on, is there ever any right time to accord justice except right now? How many more young lives need to be destroyed before you are willing to hear this moral imperative?

Shame

At last the mainstream media is picking up the Lawrence King story: NOT!

Huffington Post is reporting today that Anderson Cooper had announced that Monday night's CNN 360 show would run a segment on the murder of Lawrence King. In blog comments prior to the show, Cooper suggests that the bullying of this gay teen did not receive the attention it deserved from parents and school officials.

Cooper prepared a segment on the Lawrence King murder, which CNN then cut from last night's program, while running a segment on a boy singing in his underwear. More on this shameful story, along with a clip of the segment that was cut, may be found at

www.huffingtonpost.com/dipayan-gupta/cnn-cuts-gay-teen-killing_b_88595.html

In my blog discussions about gay issues at the National Catholic Reporter blogsite, I am learning quite a bit about some of the reasons underlying media avoidance of such stories, as well as underlying reasons for schools' refusal to address the problem and for the shameful silence of the churches.

One blogger with whom I've been in dialogue speaks of religious freedom--specifically, of the right of "Christians" not to accept LGBT people.

To which I wish to respond: religious freedom ends where hate begins. Religionists have a right to believe whatever nonsense they want, and that right should be respected. If members of a religious group want to believe that the moon is made of green cheese (and that God so made it 2000 years ago on the first day of creation), I'm all for the right to hold this belief.

What I resist and will keep resisting is the use of religion to support or foment hatred. In a civil society comprised of many different types of people, religion cannot be allowed to fray the threads of the civil social contract that holds us all together.

Another blogger at the NCR site resists the notion that youth can be identified as gay or lesbian at an early age in schools. In my view, this resistance is counter-intuitive. As the case of Lawrence King demonstrates, schoolchildren are often very quick to identify a classmate as gender-inappropriate and to harass that child precisely and solely for this reason.

Underlying the squeamishness of some citizens--and some church members--to entertain this possibility is, I would suggest, a fear that when those of us who are openly gay or lesbian report such experiences from our own younger years and ask for bullied youth to be protected in schools today, we're recruiting.

This strange fear on the part of the mainstream overlooks the reality that youth are, in fact, often identified as gay-lesbian or gender-inappropriate at an early age, and bullied for this reason. And when this happens, schools often do nothing at all to protect the tormented youngster. Parents sometimes even cheer the bullying, maintaining that they have a religious right to teach their children to oppose homosexuality.

And through it all, the churches remain silent. Children are being murdered in our nation, and the churches will not address the problem. This is shameful.

As I have testified in previous blog postings, as an openly gay educator, I myself experienced severe reprisal from a supervisor when I was charged with leading faculty in a project of preparing students for civic engagement. To be specific, I was punished for suggesting on a single occasion that faculty look at GLSEN--Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network--as a resource for civic engagement. This was in a church-affiliated university that claims to deplore prejudice against gay people.

Why do I keep reporting this? Because it has to be said. Because mainstream media outlets collude with the churches in keeping silent.

Because children continue to be bullied and murdered.

And because, as a believer, I cannot remain silent and live with myself.

The Week in Review: Combating Violence Against Gay Youth

As this week winds to a close, and I try to juggle multiple projects (what birthday gift do you give a connoisseur of chocolate who has every variety in the world?), it occurs to me to gather an assortment of articles that have impressed me in recent days. All are pertinent to themes discussed in previous postings.

As my profile for this blogsite indicates, one of the issues that most engages my passion is to stop bullying of LGBT children in school. This passion stems, in part, from my own experience of having been bullied for my conspicuous lack of gender “normativity” in childhood. I can recall being taunted in junior high school, called a queer, even before I had any inkling what that term meant. I remember coming home the first time I was called this, and asking my mother what the term meant.

Her answer was a variant of one she gave me when I learned the 10 commandments as a young child, and asked what “adultery” meant: “It’s when mommies and daddies do bad things.” “Queer,” she replied, means “when men do bad things.”

Not very enlightening, but enough to clue me in to the fact that this term had something to do with the forbidden area of sex, and that, as with everything falling into that murky shadowland, to be queer was to be shameful. So I was queer, then, even though I had no clear idea what this meant, and the area of sexuality itself was a complete shadowland into which I had never even ventured . . . .

Whatever being queer was, I soon learned, it evidently justified being knocked down by the vice-president of the school’s bible study club, whenever I missed a shot in volleyball (not an infrequent occurrence). It justified the coaches standing by and watching this happen and doing nothing to reprimand the boy who repeatedly assaulted me.

Being queer evidently also allowed other boys to grope what they called my breasts (my non-existent male breasts!) in gym class, again without any punishment by the coaches. It allowed the coaches to put me at the start of the line of boys on all fours over which the class vaulted when we did gymnastics, a position that allowed anyone vaulting over to kick the first person in line in the ribs or side—hard kicks excused as part of the launching process.

I sensed, without having full clarity, that being queer had something to do with being a sissy, another term with which I had contended in school (and at home, and at church) as far back as I could recall. I was a liability in most games boys played on the school ground, so that I was almost always chosen last for a sport. In baseball, I was put far, far into one of the fields, where I could usually find something that really interested me, like heads of clover to be woven into flower necklaces—thus confirming the poor opinion of my sporting skills when the ball that I wouldn’t have caught, anyway, flew over my head as I sat on the ground in the clover, oblivious to the game around me.

I remember the cheek-burning shame of being nominated for the position of captain of the safety patrol team in fifth grade (whatever can S. Gibbs have been thinking?), and the speech my nominator gave before the whole school: “Bill Lindsey may walk like a girl and talk like a girl, but I can assure you he’s all boy.” Most of all, I remember the howls of laughter that day from the sixth-grade classes who occupied the front rows of the auditorium.

I don’t recall these scenes to wallow in self-pity. I can laugh at most of them now. I recall them to remind myself and others that there are still children enduring this treatment in our school system—and with the full complicity of school officials and parents. What happened this week to Lawrence King in Oxnard, CA—a gay fifteen-year old boy murdered by a classmate after repeated taunts about his sexual orientation--should not happen again to any other child in an American school: http://www.towleroad.com/2008/02/gay-junior-high.html.

And even now, the “mainstream” media remains shamefully silent about this event, and about the problem of bullying of LGBT children in schools (on media silence, see www.bilerico.com/2008/02/wheres_the_outrage.php). At my last job, where I was repeatedly reprimanded (in a church-based institution!) for bringing up issues having to do with LGBT concerns, I remember being told—by a supervisor whose son is gay, no less—that it was inappropriate and unacceptable for me to mention GLSEN, Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, in a discussion of the school’s mission to educate students to address social ills.

Never mind that the school prides itself on having a founder who linked liberal education to civic engagement, and who stressed that the scope of a college’s civic engagement should be as wide as the needs of the community it served. Or that the university’s Education Department is accredited by an institution that requires the Department to assure that it does not discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation, and prepares teachers who can respect diversity and teach tolerance . . . . Or that my charge was to lead the faculty in preparing a major project that would highlight the school’s commitment to civic engagement of all kinds . . . . Or that violence towards gay students is a serious problem on many historically black college/university campuses (HBCUs)—a group to which this university belongs—where a culture of silence feeds violence and leaves LGBT students with few role models to help them navigate currents of shame and self-loathing.

I was also told by the same supervisor that bringing up attacks on homeless people was unacceptable, because the faculty leaders who reported to me weren’t interested in hearing about this problem. Interestingly enough, just this past week, the NY Times reported that the community in which the university is located has been identified as the key city in the nation in which educational networks must address the problem of violence against the homeless. This is an epidemic problem in the community in which this civic engagement-oriented HBCU is located; and it is youth, youth who need education, who are primarily responsible for the problem.

When I proposed that GLSEN, among many other organizations helping youth address social ills, should be looked at as a possible resource for our school’s civic engagement project, I was told by my supervisor that I was “putting my lifestyle into the face of colleagues.” My response—that I have a life, and not a lifestyle—was not well-received, to say the least. When the powers that be decree that LGBT people have lifestyles rather than lives, it evidently behooves us to accept the demeaning social location we’ve been assigned, and to be silent—even when we are educators charged with leading civic engagement projects on behalf of the youth we are educating.

So my concern with LGBT bullying has deep roots. For that reason, an article in today’s Bilerico blog caught my eye: www.bilerico.com/2008/02/the_way_we_raise_our_gays.php. Erik Leven asks what happens when we leave LGBT children to fend for themselves as they are bullied and shamed. He calls the churches to accountability for their silence about this endemic American problem. A choice quote:

“If a child is particularly beaten down--by their church, their parents, their school or their peers when they come out--the baggage is that much heavier. As they approach adulthood it would be common and understandable if they carry feelings of worthlessness, self-loathing and general depression. Is this what we want? All you Christians who believe you're speaking FOR Jesus--do you really think Jesus himself would want this? Whole populations of unhealthy, unhappy kids who go on to lead unhappy and unhealthy lives. This is not because we're gay. It's because YOU can't accept it. Wouldn't you suppose this world would be a better place if children were to feel comfortable with who they are and then approach adulthood in that way?”

On a related, but separate, theme, this week’s news carries many articles noting that the Vatican’s attack on the Spanish government, which has legalized gay marriage and teaches tolerance for LGBT persons in its schools, continues. On this, see especially two postings on the Clerical Whispers blog at http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com, entitled "Rift Between Madrid and Vatican" and "Spanish Opposition Leader Targets Gays." It strikes me as particularly reprehensible that the Vatican-backed opposition party is using the issue of gay adoption as a wedge issue to gain votes.

And on the continuing use of that wedge issue in our own political context, I recommend Brynn Craffey's www.bilerico.com/2008/02/my_give_a_damns_busted.php.

"God’s got my back,” indeed.

For a humorous look at how gay marriage is responsible for every possible calamity in the universe, see the second video on Peterson Toscano’s a musing blog under the entry “Friday Night Ex-Gay Entertainment” at http://a_musing.blogspot.com/.

And as a reminder that gay artists and activists are interested in issues transcending those of the gay community, see Sam Harris’s new anti-war song at www.samharris.com/waronwar/.

And, finally, for a heartening reminder that some church folks do get it, see the following article about a Catholic Chinese ministry to the gay community at Clerical Whispers:
http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/02/sister-fabians-pro-gay-crusade.html.

Since this is Black History Month, I want to close this week in review blog entry with a quote from one of my African-American heroes, who worked intently (as did Bayard Rustin, the black gay Quaker activist whose quote about angelic troublemakers forms the footer for this blog page) to develop strategies of social analysis that recognize the interconnection of problems such as racism, sexism, poverty, and homophobia. This hero is Mary McLeod Bethune.

Bethune once spoke of seeing a small girl cross the street and thinking to herself that this child could one day be a Mary McLeod Bethune. Mary McLeod Bethune saw everyone’s child as a child to be nurtured, educated, taught self-respect. Her philosophy of educating students through requiring them to be involved in civic engagement is based on a strong conviction that colleges and universities should be involved in addressing the social ills of their own communities.

If Mary McLeod Bethune were alive today, I have absolutely no doubt that she would be intently concerned about incidents such as the murder of Lawrence King. I have no doubt that she would be strongly supporting the coalition of HBCUs who have banded together under the auspices of the Human Rights Project to address anti-gay violence on black college campuses. And I can well imagine she would applaud Barack Obama for his heroic speech in a black church in Atlanta several Sundays ago, in which he spoke courageously and forthrightly about the need of the African-American community to confront homophobia.

Bethune’s last will and testament speaks eloquently of her commitment to build a better world for youth. During Black History Month, wouldn’t it be wonderful if black churches and white churches—all churches alike—realized that some of the youth to whom we are handing over the world are gay and lesbian youth, or youth who will choose new gender identities? Those youth are often, as people are reporting about Lawrence King, sensitive, kind, gentle, gifted human beings whose gifts are sorely needed to build a more humane world.

They do not deserve to live in shame. They certainly do not deserve to be bashed, taunted, or murdered. I call on the churches to listen to Mary McLeod Bethune’s last will and testament and to imagine some of the youth Bethune envisages here as gay youth:

"The world around us really belongs to youth for youth will take over its future management. Our children must never lose their zeal for building a better world. They must not be discouraged from aspiring toward greatness, for they are to be the leaders of tomorrow. . . .We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends."