Time for another roundup. Yee hah! Youth and Schools Kevin Jennings, assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools in the U.S. Department of Education, and founder of GLSEN, is speaking out about the beating of a high school student in Belleville, Illinois and the inaction (or cheering encouragement) of bystanders. Meanwhile, […]
Politics and Law Amicus briefs are coming in to Florida’s third district court of appeal from LGBT and other civil-rights groups, in support of a circuit court decision that allowed a gay couple to adopt two brothers, effectively overturning the state’s ban on adoption by same-sex couples. Despite new legislation in Victoria, Australia, to allow
(Originally published, with slight variation, as my Mombian newspaper column.) “I felt that teenagers in particular were really affected by anti-gay prejudice,” said Academy Award-winning filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, “but so much of the conversation that’s been had to date about that prejudice has been solely focused on how homophobia affects youth who are self-identified as
Safe Schools After reviewing the suicide of 11-year-old Jaheem Herrara, Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, a retired Superior Court judge in Fulton County, Georgia, said the boy was “emotionally ruined” by the recent murder of his uncle and the death of his grandmother, and his school was not responsible for his death. The boy’s mother, Masika
No, I’m not talking about Prop 8. I’m talking about the decision by the Alameda school board to adopt an LGBT-inclusive safe schools curriculum. I wrote last week about the brewing controversy in Alameda, so I’ll refer you to that post for the details. Here’s the short version: Supporters of the measure wanted to curb
I wrote the other day about an escalating situation in Alameda, California, where some conservative parents are objecting to including materials about LGBT families in the elementary school diversity curriculum. This morning, at 11:15 a.m. Eastern, 9:15 a.m. Central, 8:15 a.m. Pacific, Brad Dacus, founder and president of the conservative Pacific Justice Institute will be
Lest you think Prop 8 was the only controversial LGBT issue in California: First, the Alameda School District became the target of irate right-wing parents who learned that school officials were creating elementary school lesson plans that “talked about teasing and explained the different definitions of family.” The lessons included And Tango Makes Three, a
The recent suicides of two young boys after repeated bullying at school have made many of us, myself included, wonder what we could do. One of the ways the HRC Foundation Family Project has responded is to push up the May release of its “Introduction to Welcoming Schools” guide, “An Inclusive Approach to Addressing Family
Our stories told: Author, parent, and transgender woman Jennifer Finney Boylan recently told her story of transitioning in the New York Times’s column, “Modern Love.” Thanks to Family Equality for pointing out the piece. The 2009 Pride and Joy Families Weekend Conference in upstate New York was a big success, according to the Utica Observer-Dispatch.
Another 11-year-old boy, Jaheem Herrera, has hanged himself after enduring repeated bullying. (The horrible news comes via Will at Pam’s.) There is some reporting that he was bullied with anti-LGBT taunts, among others. Just last week, after the suicide of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, I asked “How many more children must die before we as a
