Arkansas Blog: Day of Silence

A Breaking the Silence rally is set at 5 p.m. Friday at the state Capitol as part of a national Day of Silence in support of gay and lesbian students. They must often suffer in silence harassment in schools. Read on for details.

NEWS RELEASE

Breaking the Silence Rally

Friday, April 25, 2008 - 5:00pm

Front Steps - Capitol Bldg. Little Rock

This event is a celebration by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students and their allies at the close of the Day of Silence events that will take place in schools in Arkansas and across the nation on April 25.

The Day of Silence (www.dayofsilence.org), a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is a student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment -- in effect, the silencing -- experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies.

Hundreds of thousands of students across the nation will come together on April 25 to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) behavior.

This year’s Day of Silence will be held in memory of Lawrence King an 8th grader in California who was gunned down and killed in school by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. The goal of the Day of Silence is to inspire change so that such a tragedy and others like it never happen again.

Arkansas has seen its own share of anti-LGBTQ behavior. In Fayetteville, 1996 William Wagner was viciously beaten for being gay by other students.

In 2003 a Jacksonville youth, Thomas McLaughlin was "outed" to his parents by his principal, forced to read excerpts from the Bible and punished for talking about his sexual orientation and punished again for speaking about the punishment.

Students' Experiences
In its 2005 National School Climate Survey, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) found:

75% of students heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke" frequently or often at school, and nearly nine out of ten (89%) reported hearing "that's so gay" or "you're so gay" -- meaning "stupid" or "worthless" -- frequently or often.
Over a third (37.8%) of students experienced physical harassment at school based on sexual orientation and more than a quarter (26%) based on their gender expression.
Nearly one-fifth (17.6%) of students had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and over a tenth (11.8%) because of their gender expression.
LGBTQ students were five times more likely to report having skipped school in the last month because of safety concerns than the general population of students.
LGBTQ students who experience more frequent physical harassment were more likely to report they did not plan to go to college. Overall, LGBTQ students were twice as likely as the general population of students to report they were not planning to pursue any post-secondary education.
The average GPA for LGBTQ students who were frequently physically harassed was half a grade lower than that of LGBTQ students experiencing less harassment.

Despite Arkansas' anti-bullying law, across the state LGBTQ students and those perceived as being LGBTQ continue to face harassment both physical and verbal in their schools by peers and at times school administrators and teachers. Some school districts include LGBTQ students in their anti-bullying policies, however most do not.

This treatment creates an atmosphere of fear and greatly impacts the student's access to a quality education. Many LGBTQ youth drop out of school to end the harassment; while others may attempt suicide, or turn to drugs and alcohol in an attempt to stop the pain.

Some recent examples of the mistreatment of LGBTQ students include:

a middle school student being bullied by classmates because his parents are lesbians
a youth targeted as being gay forced to the floor of the bus and having a sock stuffed in his mouth
a youth being chased through town while riding his bicycle by other youth on four wheelers screaming faggot at him
a teacher telling a class that included a lesbian student that a character in the Canterbury Tales was a "faggot"
a lesbian couple told by their principle that they could not bring their same sex dates to the prom and that if they persisted in challenging the prom would be canceled
in Fayetteville Billy Wolfe was accused of being gay; he was harassed and beaten severely

Comments

I support the idea and the cause, but...a rally at 5 p.m. on a Friday? That's pretty much the worst time ever to get any media coverage. Good luck, tho. What's exactly going to happen at this rally? I didn't see anything about that in the details above.

Posted by: Lorax | April 24, 2008 03:24 PM

Please oh great spiritual one deliver me from Christians and republican hypocrites!

I don't know but from what I've seen it's hell to be born gay even tops being born black. Just another God test thingy being administered by POTUS.

Being gay/religious is okay in Christian/GOP circles as long as you are useful and toe the line but the POTUS White House discarded Jeff Gannon/Jerry Falwell when no longer useful.

Justice Department Investigators Probe Hiring Practices (Published by Paul Kiel on August 31, 2007 I found interesting.)

Do you believe in God? Are you gay?

Have you cheated on your spouse?

What's your position on abortion?

Should gays be allowed to marry?

Have you contributed to Republican candidates?

What kind of conservative are you?

Welcome to Bush's Department of Justice. Those are just some of the questions that investigators think may have been asked during interviews for both career and political positions at the Department over the past three years.

They come from a questionnaire (pdf) sent out from the Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility, the two offices conducting the joint investigation of politicization at the DoJ.

The questionnaire (as reported yesterday by Bloomberg and The Washington Post) recently went out to an untold number of people who'd applied for spots at the DoJ. Investigators are trying to get a hold on how widely politicized the hiring process was at the Department.

Former Department White House liaison Monica Goodling admitted to "crossing the line" with regard to career employee hiring decisions when she testified before Congress. But she was pretty hazy about the details. (Did she ask about political contributions? She couldn't "rule that out.")

According to the questionnaire, investigators are interested in whether applicants were interviewed by Goodling. But she's not the only one. They also seem particularly interested in U.S. attorney purgemeister Kyle Sampson. Also named are Jan Williams, Goodling's predecessor and Angela Williamson, who worked with Goodling. As both the Post and Bloomberg note, investigators are looking back as far as January 1, 2004 -- long before Alberto Gonzales' tenure at the Department started.

The investigators announced back in May that they would be digging into the politicization of hiring practices not only by Goodling, but all over the Department -- including the DoJ Honors Program (which hires lawyers out of law school), the summer intern program, and the Civil Rights Division, where loyal Bushie Bradley Schlozman was on the lookout for "good Americans." They have their hands full and clearly have a ways to go before wrapping up.

Posted by: BWC | April 24, 2008 03:44 PM

bwc do you have your brains in the seat of your pants!
I think max like to stir up everybody he can with subjects like this
You dirty filthy Q(&)(&s are sick in the head.
NONE OF YOU are born queer.

Posted by: chasv | April 24, 2008 04:43 PM

REF NONE OF YOU are born queer. Apparently someone has been reading their bible again.

The Washington Post is full of this stuff.

Posted by: BWC | April 24, 2008 04:59 PM

chasv, many people are "born queer." You are overlooking the awesome power of jesus' saving grace.

Maybe I was born queer. I didn't have any interest in girls when I was a teen. My mom thought something was wrong. She fixed me up with dates with girls in her church. Finally she had the preacher pray for me.
I guess that did it because in a couple of months I got laid by one of the church girls and after that seems that was all I thought about. Praise the lord indeed!

Posted by: L.Wood | April 24, 2008 05:14 PM

ChasV-

Were you born retarded or did you "choose" to be that way?

Just curious.

Posted by: slydog | April 24, 2008 05:28 PM

hey, sly you are a dog... lol
That's what is so queer. It is not possible for a man to born with a woman's mind and vise versa. You have the mind of what you got/see you have... If you go against, miss use, what you are born with you are queer!

Posted by: chasv | April 24, 2008 06:32 PM

I wish gay was something you could borrow or rent. After years of watching all the gay bashing, I'd save up my sugar bowl money and buy a week of gay now and then just to piss off people like chasv. By the same token now and then I wish I could rent some black and then go give a few personal messages to some people who really need some personal messages from a big black guy. Oh damn...I'd have to rent the big part too.

I'd rent a vagina now and then too. OK......you caught me....3/4th of the time I'd use my rented vagina for my own person enjoyment. But by god, now and then I'd like to use my rental vagina and get some trucker to knock me up out behind the rest stop. Then I'd do some gestating and do a self-abortion in front of Jerry Cox's office....just to make the point that I control my rented vagina, not him or his hate group or chasv. I know that's pretty extreme, but it's pretty frustrating to be a straight white guy in these times that call for public displays of defiance!

I'm glad we did it, but my lily white daughter and I did look kinda silly in the last Mexican protest march in Fort Baptist. Our Mexican brothers and sisters took a while before they figured out what the old white dude and little girl were up to, marching and carrying signs. I'd rent me some Mexican skin now and then too.

What it will take to change the world are lots of old lumpy straight white guys getting off their asses and standing up with their gay, black, Asian, Indian, and Hispanic brothers and sisters and anyone else not getting the full dose of that "all men are created equal" stuff. I'm warning you.....don't make me go renting stuff.....it will be real ugly and you'll be crying and a-prayin for me to stop!

Posted by: Deathbyinches | April 24, 2008 06:58 PM

"all men are created equal"????? Where does it say men are all equal?
If men are all created equal then why are some tall, some weak, some fat, some smarter, some dumber, some richer, some carpenters, some artist, some are deformed, on and on and on,,, we damn sure are not equal.
The laws we have tempts to make us equal but that as far as it goes. We have to live with the unequal things in our lives.
But I know what you mean by being equal but we're all different is some ways, thanks to God for that.

Posted by: chasv | April 25, 2008 09:50 AM

Arkansas Blog

Day of Silence

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