Harassment Shouldn’t Be Part of School Life

If you’re young and gay, the political system’s not just hard of hearing, it’s stone deaf. Gay and lesbian youths have been telling their stories of being harassed at school to politicians in California for four years now, stories of everyday brutality and a toxic hatred that have been allowed to flourish throughout most of the state’s educational system. Nothing has been done.

Lawmakers have the opportunity to reconsider the matter during this legislative session in the form of a bill that would add sexual orientation to school nondiscrimination laws in districts that don’t already have such provisions. (Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified do.) The bill, coauthored by Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) and 31 other Democratic legislators, will have its first key hearing before the Assembly Education Committee on April 12.

Today, hundreds of gay and lesbian students are expected to go to Sacramento on Youth Lobby Day to advocate for the bill, which is based on a simple proposition: All students, regardless of sexual orientation, deserve equal access to educational institutions and basic safety while there.

Does this sound like the stuff of controversy? Outside the the capital and its polarizing distortions, it isn’t. In fact, more than 50 school and community college districts across the state of California, in urban, suburban and rural communities representing every point on the political spectrum, have instituted nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation. Among them are Cerritos, Riverside, Ukiah and Stockton--not exactly hotbeds of radicalism.

Unfortunately, lawmakers’ reluctance to address this problem has opened the door to political extremists who are attempting to turn a matter of basic fairness and decency--protecting kids from being harassed and attacked--into yet another divisive moral crusade. The truth is the bill is simply an extension of legal protections already extended to lesbian and gay adults who work in schools. Yet young people who attend those very same schools are discriminated against, harassed and bullied without impunity; the law doesn’t say a word about it.

Neither do some of the people who run the schools. A counselor at my agency recently brought to my attention the case of a young boy perceived to be gay by his peers. He’s just 12 and very shy, in part because he has been terrorized by other students. This treatment has been tolerated by his school, which doesn’t include sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policies. Finally, the boy was beaten so violently that he was left disoriented and suicidal. He’s now commuting an hour to a different school.

Stories such as this unfold every day in California’s schools. When hundreds of young lesbian and gay people go to the capital today, legislators should listen to what they’ve experienced and what they’re asking for: a fair shot at a safe education.