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Mon Jun 28, 9:36 PM ET
PlanetOut Network
LGBT students are completely unprotected in schools in 42 states while only truly "safe" in two, announced the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in a report released Monday.
The report summarizes policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in six categories: nondiscrimination laws, safe-schools laws throughout the state, local safe-schools policy, education on sexuality and safer sex practices, quality of education and whether laws stigmatizing GLBT people exist in the state.
New Jersey and Minnesota came in first and second in the country according to the report, with the only two "A" scores in the country. Mississippi came in 51st, with a score of minus three out of a possible hundred.
GLSEN gave negative scores only to states with laws specifically restricting schools from positively describing GLBT issues or people in schools: Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
Conversely, fewer than 25 percent of students in kindergarten through twelfth grade are protected from discrimination by safe-schools laws. Only eight states (California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin) have statewide legal protections for students by sexual orientation. Of those, only California, Massachusetts and New Jersey include protection for gender identity.
Six more states (Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York and South Carolina) are now considering legislation prohibiting discrimination and/or harassment in schools, but only four of those include gender identity language.
"This report highlights what many safe-schools advocates have feared -- that our nation's policymakers have failed to give schools the policies and programmatic support they need to change environments where bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity are the rule and not the exception," remarked GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings in a press release Monday.
In a 2003 study of the "climate" of our nation's schools, GLSEN found a link between safe-schools laws and increased LGBT attendance and safety in school. Four out of five GLBT students reported homophobic harassment by their peers, while 83 percent stated that faculty and staff observing this harassment "never or only rarely intervene."
"In classrooms where 'faggot' is heard more often than the pledge of allegiance and 39 percent of LGBT students report being physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation, our schools and the states that govern them are failing," Jennings continued.
The same 2003 study showed that the group least protected by law -- transgender youth -- reported more physical assault and verbal harassment than did nontrans lesbian, gay and bisexual youth.
GLSEN's public policy director, Neil Bomberg, stated Monday that "As the nation prepares for this fall's campaign season, it is time for local, state and national candidates -- incumbents and challengers alike -- to articulate their commitment and legislative plans to address the violence, bias and harassment so pervasive in America's schools."
"Always forgive your enemies...nothing annoys them quite so much." Oscar Wilde
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