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Consider joining:Today's Health/Excercise Message:Bullying in Schools: Harassment Puts Gay Youth at Risk
While trying to deal with all the challenges of being a teenager, gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgender (GBLT) teens additionally have to deal with harassment, threats, and violence directed at them on a daily basis. They hear anti-gay slurs such as "homo", "faggot" and "sissy" about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes. Even more troubling, a study found that thirty-one percent of gay youth had been threatened or injured at school in the last year alone!
Their mental health and education, not to mention their physical well-being, are at-risk.
How is their mental health being affected?
- Gay and lesbian teens are at high risk because `their distress is a direct result of the hatred and prejudice that surround them,' not because of their inherently gay or lesbian identity orientation.
- Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts.
How is their education being affected?
- Gay teens in U.S. schools are often subjected to such intense bullying that they're unable to receive an adequate education. They're often embarrassed or ashamed of being targeted and may not report the abuse.
- GLBT students are more apt to skip school due to the fear, threats, and property vandalism directed at them. One survey revealed that 22 percent of gay respondents had skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe there.
- Twenty-eight percent of gay students will drop out of school. This is more than
three times the national average for heterosexual students.- GLBT youth feel they have nowhere to turn. According to several surveys, four out of five gay and lesbian students say they don't know one supportive adult at school.
What can we do to help?
Schools should offer a safe and respectful learning environment for everyone. When bullying is allowed to take place, it affects everyone. For every GLBT youth who reported being targeted for anti-gay harassment, four heterosexual youth reported harassment or violence for being perceived as gay or lesbian. Also, we know that bullying was a contributing factor in the Columbine shootings and other school violence. Students, teachers, and school administrators who look the other way are contributing to the problem. In contrast, kids who said that they had a supportive faculty or openly gay staff member were more likely to feel as if they belong in their school.
Help end bullying at your school with the following actions:
- Be alert to signs of distress.
- Work with student councils to have programs on respect, school safety, and anti-bullying.
- Ask school personnel to have a discussion at an assembly or an after school activity about gay prejudice.
- Help start a Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) chapter at your local high school. Youth whose schools had these kinds of groups were less likely to have reported feeling unsafe in their schools.
- Arrange for a group like GLSEN to present bullying prevention activities and programs at your school.
- Do encourage anyone who's being bullied to tell a teacher, counselor, coach, nurse, or his or her parents or guardians. If the bullying continues, report it yourself.
- Members of Peckers Pics should join our President Barack Obama group . (Health Care, Gay Rights, Gay Marriage, Repeal DOMA & Don't Ask Don't Tell
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Take Action:
- Boycott advertisers of Glenn Beck on Fox News as well as all of FOX NEWS! Glenn has lied about Health-care, called our President a racist, and is anti-gay rights.
- We demand immediate end of DADT. It is out-right discrimination.
- Boycott Bill O'Reilly and FOX News and their advertisers. Bill discussed a French commerical by McDonalds that was meant to show that McDonalds is Gay Friendly. Bill said what is next? Is McDonalds going to get be Al-Qaida friendly as well? Further, Bill said that McDonalds would never show a gay friendly commercial in the USA. Imagine, Bill is comparing Gays to Al-Qaida!
- Boycott Arizona the home of senile - Sen. John McCain: because of their Hateful anti-Immigration Law that encourages racial profiling and increases hatred towards minorities. A remedy: Demand Republicans to support Immigration Reform. Further, Their Senator McCain voted against ending DADT and blocked Immigration reform! We shall hold the voters of Arizona responsible!
- NEW: Boycott Target and Best Buy for donating money towards anti-gay political candidates/organizations.
This group is called "Peckers PICS." The English - slang definition of "pecker" is to pluck at the truth. Therefore, we peck at items such as Gay Men's Health, Male Fitness, Gay (LGBT) Politics & Issues. In this section you may peck at each photo in order to decide the winner of the "war of the fittest!" Whereas, you should select the guy that may inspire you to exercise and "get fit!" Warning: This may stoke you!
Remember your participation in discussion of health / news articles - appearing in this message is greatly appreciated!
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21Joburg, South Africa; Gay Pride; Oct 2, 2010
Joburg, South Africa; Gay Pride; Oct 2, 2010
By DAVID CRARY / The Associated Press / October 9, 2010NEW YORK -- A spate of teen suicides linked to anti-gay harassment is prompting school officials nationwide to rethink their efforts against bullying - and in the process, risk entanglement in a bitter ideological debate.
The conflict: Gay-rights supporters insist that any effective anti-bullying program must include specific components addressing harassment of gay youth. But religious conservatives condemn that approach as an unnecessary and manipulative tactic to sway young people's views of homosexuality.
It's a highly emotional topic. Witness the hate mail - from the left and right - directed at Minnesota's Anoka-Hennepin School District while it reviews its anti-bullying strategies in the aftermath of a gay student's suicide.
The invective is "some of the worst I've ever seen," Superintendent Dennis Carlson said. "We may invite the Department of Justice to come in and help us mediate this discussion between people who seem to want to go at each other."
Carlson's district in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis is politically diverse, and there are strong, divided views on how to combat bullying.
"We believe the bullying policy should put the emphasis on the wrong actions of the bullies and not the characteristics of the victims," said Chuck Darrell of the conservative Minnesota Family Council.
That's a wrongheaded, potentially dangerous approach, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network - which tries to improve the school climate for gay students nationwide.
"Policies have to name the problem in order to have an impact," said GLSEN's executive director, Eliza Byard. "Only the ones that name it see an improvement."
According to a 2009 GLSEN survey of 7,261 students, only 18 percent said their schools had a comprehensive program addressing anti-gay bullying, while gay students in schools that had such programs were less likely to be victimized and more likely to report problems to staff.
Across the political spectrum, every group weighing in on the issue had deplored the recent deaths - the latest in a long series of suicides over many years by harassed gay teens, but dramatic nonetheless because of the high toll in a short span.
The most recent and highest-profile case involved Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi, 18, who killed himself by jumping off the George Washington bridge after his roommate secretly recorded him with another male student, then broadcast the video online.
But at least four younger teens have killed themselves since July after being targeted by anti-gay bullying, including Justin Aaberg, 15, of Andover, Minn., who hanged himself in his room in July. His friends told his mother he'd been a frequent target of bullies mocking his sexual orientation.
Five other students in his Anoka-Hennepin school district have killed themselves in the past year, and gay-rights advocates say bullying may have played a role in two of these cases as well.
Carlson, the district superintendent, lost a teenage daughter of his own in a car crash, and says he shares the anguish of the parents bereaved by suicide. He acknowledges that a controversial district policy calling for "neutrality" in classroom discussions of sexual orientation may have created an impression among some teachers, students and outsiders that school staff wouldn't intervene aggressively to combat anti-gay bullying.
The district - Minnesota's largest - serves nearly 40,000 students in 13 towns. The school board adopted the neutrality policy in 2009 as a balancing act, trying not to offend either liberal or conservative families.
Rebecca Dearing, 17, a junior who belongs to the gay-straight alliance at the district's Champlin Park High School, said the neutrality policy caused teachers to shy away from halting anti-gay harassment - sometimes leaving her gay friends feeling vulnerable to the point where they don't come to school.
"This shouldn't be a political issue any more, when it's affecting the lives of our students," she said. "It's a human issue that needs to be dealt with. They can be doing more and they're not."
In August, amid the furor over the suicides, the district clarified its anti-bullying program - saying that it was not governed by the neutrality provision and had always been intended to encourage vigilant, proactive adult intervention to curb anti-gay harassment. Staffers were told failure to intervene would be punished.
Justin Aaberg's mother, Tammy Aaberg, is convinced the broader neutrality policy has been damaging to gay students and wants it changed. She said she heard belatedly from Justin's friends about instances in past years where he was harassed that she was never notified about even through staff members were aware.
Now she sees signs that the district wants to be more diligent, but isn't fully reassured.
"Most of the teachers and principals, and maybe even now the superintendent, they mean well - they want to intervene," she said. "But the teachers still don't know what they can and can't do."
Nadia Boufous Phelps, the school psychologist at Anoka's Blaine High School, is co-advisor for its gay-straight alliance - to which 27 of the 3,000 students belong. She welcomes the attempt to clarify the stance toward anti-gay bullying.
"In the past, the staff often would not intervene," she said. "Now the district has come out loud and clear, if you hear "That's so gay,' if you witness anything, you must do something."
Still, she said, "We still have a long way to go"
Carlson says his district, seven years ago, was among the first in the state to implement a comprehensive anti-bullying program. Now he's exasperated by the highly charged, politicized debate that has flared since Aaberg's suicide.
"It's a terribly sensitive situation," he said. "Hurtful statements on either side are not helpful ... and the kids are watching."
Phil Duran, staff attorney for the statewide gay rights group OutFront Minnesota, says Carlson and his colleagues are constrained by school board members who do not want to anger conservative voters in the district.
"They're between a rock and a hard place," he said. "I do think they want to do the right thing - I don't think they known what the right thing is."
Nationally, the recent suicides have intensified calls on Congress to pass a pending bill, the Safe Schools Improvement Act. It would require schools receiving federal funds to implement bullying prevention programs that specifically address anti-gay harassment.
Supporters of the act say it has bipartisan support, but the likelihood of Democratic losses in the Nov. 2 election cloud its prospects, and it is vehemently opposed by many conservatives.
"A lot of these anti-bullying programs are crossing the lines far beyond bullying prevention into adult-oriented material and politics," said Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family. Mission America president Linda Harvey said the act would "incorporate mandatory pro-gay propaganda."
According to GLSEN, 10 states have anti-bullying laws along the lines of the Safe Schools Act - requiring specific components addressing anti-gay harassment. But gay-rights activists say enforcement and compliance is not uniform.
For example, Dave Reynolds of the Trevor Project, which seeks to combat teen suicides, says many California schools are not in compliance with the state's 10-year-old law. One problem area, he said, is California's Central Valley - the source of many calls to the Trevor Project's suicide hot line.
Jeffree Merteuil-Clark, 17, is a junior who's active in the gay-straight alliance at Frontier High School in Bakersfield, a Central Valley city not far from Tehachapi. That's the town where 13-year-old Seth Walsh, hanged himself outside his home last month after enduring taunts from classmates about being gay. He died after nine days in a coma.
Merteuil-Clark said the teachers who are sympathetic to bullied gay students tend to be cautious, fearing they might antagonize Kern County school administrators who want to "sweep the problem under the rug."
"Growing up gay in Kern County, you have all this opposition to you," he said. "It does have an impact on you. When you're little, you think the rest of the world hates you."
The debate has proved to be a minefield for the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, one of the largest in the nation, as it strives to serve schools ranging from progressive to conservative.
"We have to be extremely careful," said Marlene Snyder, the Olweus development director, describing a community-by-community approach which enables schools to tailor the program as they see fit in regard to anti-gay bullying.
"We've worked in all kinds of schools," Snyder said. "Some have very much taken on the homophobic situation. Other schools won't touch it with a 10-foot pole."
GLSEN sees a mixed picture nationwide - gay-straight alliances continue to spread, numbering more than 4,000 nationwide, yet nine of 10 gay students in its latest survey reported suffering anti-gay harassment,
Asked for an example of an effective program, GLSEN leader Eliza Byard cited New York City's Respect for All Initiative. The district, which serves 1.1 million students, makes specific mention of sexual orientation in its anti-bullying training for teachers and its materials for students.
"There's always more to do," said Elayna Konstan, head of the Office of School and Youth Development. "We're always trying to do this work better."
Of course, even a highly praised anti-bullying program doesn't spare New York City from its own share of anti-gay violence. Police charged members of a street gang with brutally beating a recruit they suspected of being gay and torturing him and two other people last week.
Remember: Boycott Target and Best Buy for donating money towards anti-gay political candidates/organizations and to Proposition 8 (California) to prevent gay marriage. The Formal Boycott began this past weekend. I stopped shopping these stores - even though I want a new washer/dryer and new clothes for the Fall. I would not purchase "Blood Diamonds," nor should a person / organization be contributing funds to both Hitler / Nazi's and the Jews at the same time! Obviously giving money to the Jews and not Hitler/Nazi's is the right thing to do. Hence, these companies violated my trust and well-being. They gave money to my enemy who would terminate me from my job, deny me housing and send me to a Internment camp. Therefore, goodbye Target and Best Buy! The CEO's of these companies have been insensitive to our reaction and do not even comprehend their actions! What takes so long to "fire" these Neanderthals?
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