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LOS ANGELES - As an openly lesbian high school student, Mattye Dane had classmates call her names, threaten violence and throw things at her in hallways. But her complaints were brushed aside by teachers, so the 16-year-old dropped out.
"Every school I've been to, I've experienced problems," Dane says.
Such treatment inspired a 1999 California law requiring schools to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation or perceived gender. Similar laws have been adopted in about 10 other states.
But in conservative Orange County, one school district has refused to incorporate the rule into its own education code, saying the measure is immoral and promotes transsexuality. The refusal has prompted state officials to consider withholding millions of dollars in funding for the Westminster district.
Three of Westminster's five board members said the rule could confuse children about gender roles. The Rev. Lou Sheldon, of the Traditional Values Coalition (news - web sites), agrees.
"These children are not ready to play those kinds of roles, transgender and transvestite," Sheldon said. "I respect the school district for what they've done."
In interviews, Dane and other openly gay teenagers have described being picked on and harassed, even in schools that have adopted the anti-discrimination measure.
A 2002 survey by the California Department of Education (news - web sites) found such abuse was common among middle and high school students. Of the students surveyed, 7.5 percent reported being mistreated on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation.
A separate study by the California Safe Schools Coalition also found an overlap between gender nonconformity and harassment.
"You can easily see those linkages, that a student, let's say a boy who behaves in a more effeminate way than other boys, might be harassed because he's perceived to be gay or perceived to be not masculine enough," said coalition board member Christopher Calhoun.
Such harassment can become violent. Prosecutors in Alameda County, in the San Francisco area, said transgender teen Eddie "Gwen" Araujo was killed in 2002 by boys who discovered the person they thought was a girl was biologically male. The boys' murder trial started last week.
Felisa Ihly said her openly gay son was abused at a high school in Southern California's Orange County. He wore makeup and nail polish to school and boys spit on him and shoved him against his locker. Some threatened to run him down in the parking lot.
School administrators were unsympathetic, she said.
"The principal told me she thought he was lacking in testosterone," said Ihly, who supported the 1999 legislation.
Other districts have treated the issue differently. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, a program started in 1992 allows about 100 mistreated gay and transgender students to study at separate campuses. New York City's Harvey Milk High School enrolls about 170 gay and lesbian students.
"It feels more safe," Candice Alvarez, 17, says of the so-called OASIS program in Hollywood. "There's nobody that's against gay people here."
Alvarez dropped out of a traditional high school where, she said, gay and lesbian students were picked on and harassed.
A spokeswoman for the defiant Westminster district, Trish Montgomery, said there have been no complaints of discrimination against transgender students. The district has grades kindergarten through eighth grade, and is alone in rejecting the rule among California's 1,056 school districts.
The district, about 35 miles southeast of Los Angeles, gets more than $40 million of its $68 million budget from state and federal sources. School officials have not said what they would do if funding is suspended.
Officials at the OASIS program said gay and transgender students need to be protected.
"There are just a lot of people, even in school districts, who feel it's OK for students to be bashed, teased, harassed, hassled, kicked, spit on, abused, laughed at and ridiculed to the point where they say, 'I've had enough,' where they drop out or consider dropping out," said Sandy Miller, an administrator in the OASIS program.
"Always forgive your enemies...nothing annoys them quite so much." Oscar Wilde
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smith
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On fire! |
Registered: January 1970
Messages: 1095
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I especially like the lovely line from the principal after the boy was killed by other students......"He was lacking in testosterone".
I hate that kids have to feel like aliens from another planet to only feel safe by going to a "special school". But if that's the only way to play the game, then so be it.
JJ
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Sounds to me like the OASIS program is just a way to "hide" us. How is the world spose to get along when they use segregation to take care of a problem. Start punishing the trouble makers, and save money by not seperating everyone.
Hearing that just errrrrr, i don't have the words i want.
Brian
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
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"These children are not ready to play those kinds of roles, transgender and transvestite," Sheldon said. "I respect the school district for what they've done."
yeah. riiiight, and that is why some of us spent over 10, 12 years of our lives "playing in the right role" and being absolutely fucking MISERABLE; watching relationship after relationship fail, developing eating disorders to try and starve into a boy-body, growing up to absolutely LOATHE ourselves.
PLAYING IN Their kinds of roles has OBLITERATED the "best years of my life." playing in Their kinds of roles is why i am absolutely alone, shoved EVERYONE away because i couldn't breathe or live in my own skin, and didn't know why i was so miserable, therefore making everyone AROUND me miserable, or else scared to even speak to me/mail me, or claiming i'm psychotic. and now i know why, and realised why, and have begun breaking out of this skin, and there is no one there but me.
FUCK their roles. sorry for my anger but FUCK them. and fuck making us go to different schools or campuses. i can see the logic for it, and if the kids are happy going there, and feel safer, then GOOD. the segregation fucking stinks but my good, it's TWO THOUSAND FREAKING FOUR and this crap doesn't really seem to be getting ANY better. not unless you live in the "right" places.
sorry. getting off my soapbox and crawling back into my hole.
:-[
my void does not want.
-- 2.13.61.
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