“It’s not just a gay issue,” said Sirdeaner Walker, mother of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who died by suicide last week after months of anti-gay taunts. “It’s bigger.” The Advocate has a long interview with Walker. It’s an emotionally tough read, but worth it. I mentioned in my roundup yesterday that GLSEN’s upcoming National Day […]
Two people are dead and seven injured after a man entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church Sunday and fired a sawed-off 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun during a children’s performance of the musical Annie. The shooter, Jim David Adkisson, left a letter in his car stating he hated liberals and gay people and was motivated by
Lawrence King, a 15-year-old eighth grader, was declared brain dead after being shot by a fellow student in what police are calling a hate crime. King was gay and often came to school in feminine clothing and makeup. This churns my stomach. I don’t need to tell readers here of the pervasiveness of anti-LGBT bullying
In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, the American Association of Pediatrics has compiled a list of resources to help children cope with this and other disasters. In addition, they include more general information on violence prevention, school safety, and promoting mental health. ParentDish also has links to a few other resources to help
This afternoon, my son and I were watching a free Sesame Street short from iTunes called “Happy, Healthy, Ready for School.” In it, Elmo prepares for his first day of preschool in his typically upbeat manner—just the kind of tone I want to set for my son, who will start school himself this fall. I
The events of September 11 did not spare any group in the U.S., including the LGBT community. Among the openly LGBT heroes of September 11 were Mychal Judge, chaplain of the New York Fire Department and the first official casualty of the World Trade Center, and Mark Bingham, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 83,
I will always remember, as will many of us, where I was the morning of 9/11. A lucky change in job kept me away from Ground Zero at the time of the attack. For a year, I had been commuting on the PATH train to the World Trade Center, arriving around 8:45 a.m. every day.
Four years ago today. For many of us, one of the most vivid moments of our lives, still remembered in all its intensity. And yet . . . it seems an eternity ago that we were living without the constant hum of threat, without the extra layer of fear when we fly, without the added
