Here at Truth Wins Out, the epidemic of LGBT teen suicides in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district has been on our radar for a long time.
Nonetheless, you need to head over to Rolling Stone and read this article about what LGBT kids go through in Michele Bachmann’s district every day, largely because local evangelicals have waged an all-out war on the area’s LGBT population. This blatant bigotry only serves to intensify the bullying that’s par for the course for LGBT teenagers at schools across the country. In Anoka, homosexuality is forbidden from even being discussed. Teachers and administrators do not intervene when LGBT students are harassed by their peers because they fear being fired for violating a district policy requiring them to stay “neutral” on, and banning positive references to, LGBT people and issues. And the culture of shame and fear that “Christian” fundamentalists (many of them from the same conservative church that Bachmann attended until just last year) have created around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities is so pervasive that LGBT teens feel scared and unsafe within the walls of their schools.
And they’re killing themselves because of it. So many, in fact, that the state of Minnesota declared the Anoka-Hennepin school district a “suicide contagion area.” After one of the suicides — that of Sam Johnson in 2009 — students in the district’s GSAs participated in the Day of Silence. In this GLSEN-sponsored event, participants spent the day in silence to illustrate the silencing effect of the anti-LGBT bullying that led to the loss of several of their peers. The response? Local evangelical churches organized a so-called “Day of Truth” event; their kids showed up at school wearing shirts telling their peers they could pray away the gay and engaged in anti-gay proselytizing in the hallways. (At that time the “Day of Truth” events were sponsored by Exodus International; it’s now been shifted to Focus on the Family and re-branded as a so-called “Day of Dialogue” in a transparent attempt to soft-pedal anti-gay bigotry.)
The way local evangelical “Christians” have doubled down on– not merely shown coldhearted indifference to, but doubled down on — the persecution of LGBT people, even in the wake of so many suicides, is pure evil.
Read, too, about Tammy Aaberg. Her son Justin was an Anoka High School student who committed suicide in 2010 due to anti-LGBT bullying, and his death turned her into an activist. Readers who know me know I have a soft spot in my heart for equality moms (including, I’m proud to say, my own). Hell hath no fury like a mom fighting for her LGBT child. But I have nothing short of awe for moms like Tammy Aaberg and Judy Shepard who fight for a child whom they’ve lost. I don’t know how they do it, but I admire their strength.
This is why the fight for our equality is so important. Slowly but surely, we’re building a world where no more Judy Shepards have to bury a child murdered for being gay, where no more Tammy Aabergs have to discover their baby boy dead in his bedroom because he couldn’t take another day of being bullied for his LGBT identity.
Please, read and share this article and resolve to keep fighting.
As a kid who survived bullying and grew up (yes, it does get better, if you remember not everyone wants to hurt you and you’re willing to let the barriers down and be a bit trusting) this makes me cry and then makes me angry. So angry, I could wish bullies say, being hanged from lampposts with signs
I AM A FOUL BULLY
around their necks, but for it to be legitimised is pure evil.
Suppose it was black people taunted and called monkeys and the ‘n’ word every day?
Or girls called w****s and s***s, cornered and molested?
Or Jews mocked for being Christ killers and taking all the money, their yarmulkes taken off and thrown in the bin?
Or left handers called on the side of the goats and followers of the left-hand (evil) path?
Or Christians called idiots and not living in reality, their bibles taken from them and torn up?
Or for being disabled in some way (I know what this is like)?
All I can is, never give up, you families of LGBT people, never ever give up, fight these limbs of Satan with all you have got at your disposal and finally make them see that the only thing wrong with being LGBT people is OTHER PEOPLE’S ATTITUDES.
I’m going to stop now because I am that angry, I don’t want to shout and wake my sleeping cats lay around me.
Excellent points, Jessica. I can’t add more.
But as a former Minnesotan (NOT from Anoka, thank goodness), I’m appalled and angered by the behavior there. This is not indicative of Hubert Humphrey’s Minnesota I remember.
I can’t think of a punishment bad enough for those numbskulls. I don’t approve of capital punishment, but if I did, I would add public hanging after poking out their eyes! That’s how angry I am at these pseudo “Christians.”
Jerry
They would enjoy that too much, Jerry. They have an odd fixation with persecution. What’s happening now, is causing them the type of pain they don’t want. I’m sure you all are witnessing how they are clutching their pearls as their views become increasingly irrelevant, as their undeservedly overprivileged status crumbles before their very eyes. The heteronormative crusaders will have to prove their worth to society without the advantage of favor, and this is causing them to have conniption fits. They will have to get real jobs instead of getting away with peddling hate, and this is working up their blood pressure to astronomical levels. The heaviest blow dealt to them? All that energy put into trying to exterminate the people they hate so much, is all for naught. To say nothing of the fact that they have exposed their deceitfulness, their seething hatred, their self-righteousness, their misanthropy for all to see. I would say they’re feeling plenty of pain right now.
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