"Why can't I look like this?"..?

I do. :P Well, anyway, moving right along...

The last article I posted seemed "funny" (in a "gotcha" kind of way), because the victims got their "day in court" and made those who stood by and did nothing pay a high price. But sometimes the results of teachers' and administrators' inaction are deadly and tragic—and nobody wins.

This article describes a tragedy that took place several years ago now, but I just came across it today. Together with the previous one, it illustrates a critical concept: whether it's disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, or just being "different", teasing can hurt teens so deeply that they take their own lives, and—as it took a debacle like Columbine to show the public—sometimes even those of others. High-dollar lawsuits, suicides, murders, and yet it seems that enough people still aren't getting it...

"Research indicates 31% of gay youth were threatened or injured at school last year. These experiences have a devastating impact on the educational success and mental health of youth. Anti-gay prejudice affects straight youth, too. For every gay, lesbian and bisexual youth being harassed, 4 straight students were harassed because they were perceived as being gay or lesbian. ..."

I do not believe that children or teenagers (or any people) are "naturally" cruel to one another. They learn whatever cruelty they know from the society in which they are formed. And yet the country goes right on electing leaders to our highest offices who think that making discriminatory statements and laws against those with minority ways of being and acting is just fine and jolly dandy...

How many teenage suicides? How many brutal murders? How many hate crimes? How many Matthew Sheppards? How many Tempest Smiths? How many Brandon Teenas and Gwen Arujos? How many defaced synagogues and mosques? How many more shattered lives before people realize that "One Way" is NO WAY to live together as a society??!!

What will it take for people to see through such folly as "Focus on the Family"'s shabby defense of its dangerous anti-gay rhetoric as "simply promoting the traditional family" or its inane argument that "all crime is hate crime"?

"Crimes motivated by bigotry usually arise not out of the pathological rantings and ravings of a few deviant types in organized hate groups, but out of the very mainstream of society."  —Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt, Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed

New York Times: Education
1/12/04
California School District Settles Harassment Suit by Gay Students
 By Carol Pogash

After a five-year legal battle, a school district near San Jose has agreed to pay six gay students $1.1 million and provide mandatory awareness training for school staff members. ...

It's my high school(!)...hehehe