Sometimes, you come across something in the mainstream media that simply makes you fume.
As I imagine most people know, last week, a boy name Lawrence King was shot by one of his classmates in a California school. Within 24 hours, doctors determined that he was braindead.
In an appalling act of psuedo-journalism that seems to be driven by a focus-on-family like distortion of reality, Time Magazine has publish an article on the shooting that claims that gay activists exaggerate the problem of anti-gay discrimination in schools in America.
Follow me over the fold an share the outrage.
It's hard to dissect all the distortions in the article, which has apparently (judging from the note at the end) already been edited once to remove some even more egrigious distortions included by the author. But I'll do my best to dissect the worst of them.
Let's start by looking at what I consider to be the core of the author's argument:
GLSEN itself has published a great deal of survey data showing that most gay kids aren't suffering the way King did. Though the organization paints a still overall grim picture for young gays, fully 78% of gay and transgender kids say they feel safe at school, according to a 2005 GLSEN report. According to another GLSEN survey released in 2006, only 18% of gay and transgender students said they had been assaulted in 2005 because of their sexual orientation (only 12% — probably many of the same kids — said they had been assaulted because of the way they express their gender). By comparison, according to a 2007 Centers for Disease Control report, 18.2% of male students and 8.8% of female students reported being in a physical fight at school in the last year.
Of course, one thing the author fails to note is that the same survey indicates that 93% of non-LGBT students feel safe at school. In other words, LGBT students are over three times as likely not to feel safe (22% versus 7%) as are non-LGBT students.
Next, let's look at the absurd comparison the author tries to make when he claims equivalence in violence because "only" (what an astonishing word) 18% of LGBT students report being assaulted in the previous year because of their sexual orientation, whereas 18.2% of male students report being in a physical fight.
Yeah, because being in a fight is exactly the same as being assaulted. It's a comparison stunning in its intentional blindess. Of course. the author also leaves out the part where over 37% of LGBT students report being physically harassed. And even if the two were comparable, of the 18% of boys who report being in a fight, presumably some were the assaulters, and not the assaultees. Oh, and let's not fail to notice that he split of boys from girls, further distorting the picture.
Is is clear yet that our author has an agenda, and that that agenda is to say that "homophobia is schools isn't so bad, we don't really need to do anything?"
Well if it's not, let's read more of this so-called "journalism."
True, 66% of gay and transgender kids said they had heard homophobic remarks. But roughly the same proportion — 62% — had heard sexist remarks. Some 16% of gay and transgender kids said they had been harassed because of their sexual orientation, but 18% said they had been harassed because of "the way you look or your body size."
Oh, well then, that's all right. I mean, if it's not markedly worse than sexism or making fun of people because of appearance, it must be ok. After all, we know we've completely tackled those problems!
Or wait. Maybe all three are a problem. Furthermore, if you dig a little deeper into the study, you quickly find that students are gay or perceived as too feminine (for boys) or masculine (for girls) are subjects of physical harassment far more often than any other minority in schools. In other words, while the teasing may be on the same level (as if that somehow makes it all right), the escalation of teasing to violence isn't.
And finally, for reasons I can't pretend to understand, the GLSEN survey actually made a separate category for students hearing the phrase "that's so gay." In fact, it's treated as something distinct from homophobic language, and is far more common both in terms of frequency (how often the comment is made) and overall penetration (the percentage of students who hear the comment) than are sexist, other homophobic, or appearance-related teasing/remarks.
Finally (though I'm sure, as I noted at the beginning of this diary, I can find many more problems with the article, but frankly I need to stop before I get too angry to function) let's look at this amazing insight from the author vis-a-vis hate crimes (which he, unsuprisingly, opposes separate laws to deal with):
Fortunato, who was 20 at the time of the crime, was charged with a hate crime, but in court a wrinkle emerged: he said he is bisexual and had visited gay chatrooms for sex many times. As a bisexual who had regular sex with men, did Fortunato really hate gay men? So much so that he would target one for robbery and beating? Possibly. As Kolker wrote, "Lots of gay hate crimes are committed by confused, self-loathing gay people." Or was it more likely that Fortunato picked Sandy for robbery merely because he knew a convenient place on the internet where he could find guys with pot and a willingness to meet a stranger? The law is not capable of reliably discerning what Fortunato was thinking at the time (on the stand, Fortunato himself was still struggling with his feelings about sexuality, including his own). That's why we should punish crimes, not the vaporous intentions that lead to them.
For those who don't recognize the case he's referencing, it's the 2006 murder of Michael Sandy. He discounts-- as Forunato's attorneys attempted to-- the possibility that a closeted gay man can commit a hate crime against an openly gay may. He further seems to be walking down the road to "Michael Sandy deserved it because he was willing to meet someone he didn't know and have gay sex and smoke pot with him!"
Disgusting. And, I might add, rather out of place in an article discussing the shooting death of a 15 year old gay boy in California, dontcha think?
If you're as outraged as I am, I hope you'll take the time to vent your spleen to the good people at Time magazine. The fight against homophobia and anti-LGBT discrimation is far from over, and neanderthals like Cloud, with their very clear agenda and distortion, are a major part of the problem.
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