There are two items of good news to report today. First, the Anoka-Hennepin School District (discussed in This is what the “Black Brigade” wanted for Loudoun) has reached a settlement described as unprecedented and a model for schools across the nation in appropriately addressing gender and orientation-based bullying.
The second item is that the Suffolk County School Board has removed harmful language from a proposed dress code policy that would have punished students for wearing attire “that is not in keeping with a student’s gender [sic].”
Regarding Anoka-Hennepin, Kate Kendall of the National Center for Lesbian Rights makes a very good point:
We’ve talked a great deal about bullying in schools the past several years, and many of us have committed ourselves to ending the terror for both the targets and the agents, because in many ways, both are victims. They are victims of a culture that fails to intervene and refuses to act. Nowhere has that failure been more stark than the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota.
That point is echoed in remarks by one of the plaintiffs, Anoka High School freshman Dylon Frei, who was viciously bullied as a seventh grader.
[Frei] said that speaking out has brought an unexpected level of support, even from some of the kids who used to torment him. He said some have told him, “‘I was so stupid, I’m sorry.’ That just feels great because they know what they did wrong and they’re going to stop it and they’re becoming better people.”
Truthfully, all of the children in this situation are victims. The criminal behavior and poisonous ideas polluting this school district, in which nine students felt so hopeless and alone that they ended their own lives, came from adults like activist Barb Anderson and board member Kathy Tingelstad (who resigned after casting the single vote against the settlement). The behavior of these adults has been so lethal to children that federal intervention became necessary. Let this be a warning to those who object on principle to any interference with local control of education: Do your job.
It looks like Maine may be the first state to enact marriage equality by voter referendum. We still have the same question: With voters changing their minds about equal rights for their neighbors, will the opponents of equality also be changing their minds about letting the people vote?