I have communicated privately with many members of the NC House and the NC Senate regarding passage of the anti-bullying legislation. In doing so, I made clear to them that mine was a a private correspondence written as a parent, not as a politician and not as someone who planned to publicize our discourse so at to subject them to outside pressures. I did so out in order to give them an opportunity to round the votes required for passage of bill without feeling as if I were trying to shame or embaress them publicly. And I did have continued private conversations with members of both houses, Democrat and Republican. Now that the bill has failed to pass, I'm am not going to break my word to kiss and tell about those conversations. However, am going to comment on the failure to pass this legislation and go on record publicly with my thoughts. First, here is an excerpt of a personal story which I related to them. I would like to share with you a personal experience which I hope you will take into account during your deliberations. I hope no other family has to experience the same sort of situation my family did.
My two sons, at the ages of nine and eleven, were teased and harassed— beaten in a few instances— when they were attending public school in California. As some of you may know, I raised my boys as a single parent. I taught Jamie and Winston a simple lesson: if you are threatened, always speak to your teacher, guidance counselor or principal and don’t take actions into your own hands (a departure from my Dad’s admonition to me over 40 years ago that I should bust a bully between the eyes.) Unbeknownst to me, one of my boys’ teachers was letting him out of school a few minutes early each day so that he could get a running start home from several kids who were bullying him. Neither he nor his younger brother told me about this situation, in part because of an incident months earlier in which my eldest son had been teased and reported same to his guidance counselor. Nothing happened. The teasing continued. He didn’t think that reporting the harassment would make a difference. Experience gave him no reason to believe otherwise.
A few months later, I received a call from a neighbor alerting me that my sons had been suspended from school, arrested and were being held at a juvenile detention facility. Their offense? My older son, all of 11 years old, had brought an unloaded pellet gun to school which he had borrowed from a schoolmate days earlier. He never brandished it, and it was no longer in his locker that day when another student had told their teacher about Jamie having brought the pellet gun to school. I was out-of-town on a business trip at the time. I rushed to the airport while trying to arrange bail for my kids with the assistance of my close friends on the ground.
By the time I had landed early that evening, it was clear that we were not going to be able to roust a judge to release them on bail. When I was able to visit them that evening, I will never forget the look on my sons’ faces as they stared at me in bewilderment from behind a wall of Plexiglas, clad in baggy orange jumpsuits. They were detained overnight and because of their ages and, thank God, were segregated from the rest of the population. Why had my eleven year-old brought a weapon to school? “To scare them away, Dad, so they’d leave me alone” he said. He recounted the whole story about what was happening to him on a daily basis at school.
I was livid: my kids weren’t being protected by a system responsible for their safety to the point of feeling the need to do just the opposite of what they had been taught. Jamie and Winston had been targeted because their dad was gay. That’s all. It was about their association with someone else- me-- not them. The judge who heard the case agreed some months later, lecturing the attorneys for the school district for their handling of the situation. Lawyers suggested that I file suit against the district but I had no interest in having my sons go through that ordeal just to make a point. The damage had been done. We moved on. My kids deserved better.
The school system wisely forbade the possession on school premises of any type of weapons, even seemingly harmless ones. Administrators, teachers, parents and kids were all aware and supportive of a law which made schools safer. At the same time, school administrators and faculty were insensitive to the abject bullying which endangered my sons. Their blind spot sent a loathsome signal to my kids, their classmates and the school community about the failure of those in a position of authority to respect and protect the safety of every young boy and girl. Every kid attending public school in our state deserves to be and feel safe in school. The bill before you, if anything else, will raise the bar of sensitivity of teachers and administrators in regard to exactly which sorts of situations might undermine the safety and well-being of every child.
Simply saying that we don’t need any “protected classes” misses the point. I know the language in regard to sexual orientation in this bill has become the bone of contention, but that too misses the point. So-called protected classes have evolved over all of our lifetimes in response to the times; I remember someone calling a black classmate of mine a “monkey” when I was in elementary school in Greensboro. Our teacher said “shhh” when some kids laughed. That would be unthinkable today.
The goal of this bill is to broaden awareness and strengthen safety. This legislation shouldn’t be framed by some partisan debate over social, moral or religious beliefs. A kid who’s teased for any reason needs an adult to intervene. For hook or for crook, kids are teased in our schools all the time in regard to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and the like. Ask a teacher, or a student, and you’ll get confirmation.
In closing, I hope that this story will shed a little light on the legislation before you. I’m optimistic that you will vote from the heart for what is best for our kids. Like so many issues before our state and our nation, this is not Democratic or Republican legislation. It is about keeping our kids safe— all of them. We are a moral and just people here in North Carolina. The last thing you, your colleagues or any parent would want to happen after you adjourn this session is to have a child injured or killed as a consequence of inaction on the part of this august body. The members of the North Carolina Senate who chose not to show up for work last Thursday to vote for protecting school children in our state are: Sen. Janet Cowell (D/Wake County and candidate for North Carolina State Treasurer 2008).* Sen. Charles Dannelly (D/Mecklenburg County and recently-appointed co-chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee) Sen. Malcolm Graham (D/Mecklenburg County) Sen. Kay Hagan (D/Guilford County and candidate for the United States Senate 2008)** Sen. Clark Jenkins (D/Edgemcombe, Martin and Pitt Counties)*
Sen. Larry Shaw (D/Cumberland County)
Sen. Jerry W. Tillman (R/Montgomery and Randolph Counties)* * Sens. Cowell, Jenkins and Tillman were present in the morning but were not present to vote on certain legislation later in the day.** Sen. Hagan defeated me and three other candidates in the May 2008 Democratic primary.
The kids they threw under the bus couldn't vote on Thursday, nor could their families. Every one of the aforementioned senators had voted last year for a (weaker) version of this legislation. And every one of the aforementioned members of the North Carolina Senate works for the citizens of our state. We pay their salaries and their benefits. We hired them to represent us and our children. They failed us. They failed those who don't have a voice and needed their voices to vote Aye. I have one voice and I'm using it right now. I hope more of you-- wherever you may live-- will do likewise. Last week, just after having had surgery to remove a brain tumor and against the advice of his doctors, US Senator Ted Kennedy hobbled into the well of the US Senate to cast a crucial Aye vote for Medicare health care legislation. He used his voice to represent America. God knows he had ample reason to be absent. But he showed up for work anyway. That's leadership. That's support, not lip service, when the rubber hits the road. That's courage. And, that's one helluva public servant.
NOTE FROM PAM: I'll repeat here what I said in my main post on this debacle... Had the MIA Dem members of the legislature been present and voted, the anti-bullying bill would have passed. This was a bill that would cover children who may not be gay at all, but simply do not conform to gender presentation norms. Below is freely available data those elected officials didn't deem serious or significant enough show up and vote on in order to protect all children in our schools. GLSEN: Only nine states and the District of Columbia have comprehensive anti-bullying laws that specifically address bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation and only three of these laws mention gender identity. Nine other states have "generic" anti-bullying laws that do not specifically define "bullying" or enumerate categories of protected classes such as sexual orientation or gender identity. The remaining 32 states have no laws at all. The NSCS found that both states with "generic" anti-bullying laws and states with no law at all had equally high rates of verbal harassment. States with inclusive policies that specifically enumerate categories including sexual orientation and gender identity, however, have significantly lower rates of verbal harassment (31.6% vs. 40.8%). * Bullying and Gay Youth: Students hear anti-gay slurs such as “homo”, “faggot” and “sissy” about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes. Anti-Gay Bullying: What’s the Big Deal?Overall, 61% of students said they knew someone who had been called gay or lesbian. That’s the biggest increase of any form of harassment students knew about, up from 51% in 1993. Most other experiences of sexual harassment have remained steady or decreased. * When asked about their own experiences, 36% say they have “ever” been called lesbian or gay. That’s the biggest jump among all the types of harassment students experienced, up from 17% in 1993. * 19% of boys said they had been called gay “occasionally” or “often,” double the rate in 1993 (9%). * 13% of girls said they had been called lesbian “occasionally” or “often,” almost triple the rate in 1993 (5%). Related: * PFLAG NC reacts to killing of anti-bullying bill * NC: anti-bullying bill killed |
