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As we have been mulling about the silence by the White House about the rash of suicides today, it’s interesting to receive this in a late Friday afternoon dead drop.
Statement by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the Recent Deaths of Two Young MenU.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today released the following statement:
“This week, we sadly lost two young men who took their own lives for one unacceptable reason: they were being bullied and harassed because they were openly gay or believed to be gay. These unnecessary tragedies come on the heels of at least three other young people taking their own lives because the trauma of being bullied and harassed for their actual or perceived sexual orientation was too much to bear.
“This is a moment where every one of us – parents, teachers, students, elected officials, and all people of conscience – needs to stand up and speak out against intolerance in all its forms. Whether it’s students harassing other students because of ethnicity, disability or religion; or an adult, public official harassing the President of the University of Michigan student body because he is gay, it is time we as a country said enough. No more. This must stop.”
Michael Petrelis has been asking for statements from the admin. One from Kevin Jennings materialized:
From the Desk of Kevin JenningsAs is the case for most of those reading this message, I have been horrified by the recent media coverage of student suicides prompted by bullying. I am fortunate to have a boss who is just as horrified and today made the below statement.
I hope each of you will consider ways you can help bring bullying to an end and urge you to check out www.bullyinginfo.org for useful resources in so doing.
Kevin
“His boss” being Arne Duncan. He’s put in a request to see if the LGBT liaison, Brian Bond in the Office of Public Engagement has any comment on the issue. I’ll keep you updated if a statement surfaces.
Then I received a press release entitled “ACF awards grants to reduce long-term foster care” from the WH Communications Office that seemed a weird one-off to stem the criticism that the Obama admin “doesn’t care.” This passage was highlighted in the email:
Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, which will create a county-wide system of care to address barriers to permanency and well-being for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning children and youth that are in or at-risk of placement in foster care, placement in the juvenile justice system, or homelessness.
You can read the full release about the LA award below the fold.
It’s really not about whether the administration cares; it’s about leadership and recognizing a crisis that concerns families across the country. When the rash of school shootings, including the tragedy at Columbine, it seemed every elected official had something to say, legislation to consider, and outreach to discuss the breakdown that caused them. Any WH, not just the Obama admin, has to consider that it has a role to play to reassure families that it is listening. Silence is not good for PR or for leadership.
Anyway, do you all have any thoughts about these statements from the administration departments?
HHS Awards Landmark $13.3 Million Grant to Fund L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s
Development of Model Program to Serve LGBTQ Foster YouthLOS ANGELES, Oct. 1, 2010-Today the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center was awarded a landmark $13.3 million, five-year grant from the Federal Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Administration on Children, Youth and Families to create a model program that will provide life-saving support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth in the foster care system. Following a highly competitive review process, six grants were awarded-the Center’s grant is the only one specifically to support LGBTQ youth and the only grant that did not go to a government agency or academic institution. It’s also the largest federal grant ever awarded to an LGBT organization.
The need for services for LGBT youth in foster care is dire. According to a 2001 (Feinstein) study, 78% of LGBTQ foster youth were forced to leave their foster placements due to hostility related to their sexual orientation or gender identity. In a 2001 study from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, 70% reported physical violence and 100% reported harassment in their group home. Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS), the only group home for LGBTQ foster youth in Los Angeles, closed its doors in 2008 (with its displaced residents turning to the Center for much-needed support).
“LGBTQ youth who aren’t living on the streets because of a hostile home environment are often in the foster care system,” said Lorri L. Jean, chief executive officer of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center. ”Many are rejected by foster parents and move from home to home or are considered unadoptable and live in overburdened group homes. In either case, they’re more likely to turn to turn to drugs and crime, engage in unprotected sex, or commit suicide-and when they age out of the system at 18, they’re coming to us homeless. This landmark grant will fund the development of a much-needed, model program to protect the health and well-being of LGBTQ foster youth-a program that will save lives, save taxpayer dollars, and could be replicated in cities around the country.”
By developing and leading a 19 organization collaborative that will include foster care agencies, researchers and government departments, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center will create a comprehensive system of care to help LGBTQ youth stay in school, and in homes where they feel safe and welcomed, until adulthood. The collaborative will include: foster care agencies, researchers, Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the Los Angeles Unified School District and government agencies, including: Los Angeles County’s departments of Children and Family Services, Mental Health, Probation and Juvenile Court.
“The public systems across the country that are charged with the care and well-being of children and adolescents have largely been unresponsive or slow to acknowledge the needs of LGBTQ youth, and in some cases even hostile” said L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center Chief of Staff Darrel Cummings, who led the team that developed the grant proposal. ”As a result, these systems deliver misguided, uninformed, and ultimately second-class care that harms LGBTQ youth in their custody. All too often they’re housed in isolation ‘for their own safety,’ blamed for being harassed because they’re open about their sexual orientation or gender identity, or disciplined for engaging in age-appropriate conduct that would not be punishable were it between youth of different sexes. It’s the system that’s harming them and we’ve got to change that.”
Key features of the program will include research, evaluation and documentation. “We will be recording, studying, and analyzing the program carefully,” said Cummings. ”We want to know what works for our youth and when we learn it, we will document the success so that our program can be duplicated around the country.”
The Center’s proposal to HHS was enthusiastically endorsed by: the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, County of Los Angeles Probation Department, Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaraslovsky and Hathaway-Sycamore Child and Family Services.
The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center is a national leader in serving and advocating for LGBTQ youth. In addition to a 24-bed transitional living program, where homeless youth (ages 18-24) can live for up to 18 months while developing the skills and resources to live independently, the Center operates the Jeff Griffith Youth Center, which provides meals, emergency beds, clothing, counseling and support services to youth seven days a week. And to support the healthy development of LGBTQ youth, the Center’s LifeWorks program offers: mentoring by specially trained adults, peer-support programs, college scholarships, social activities and much more.
23 Comments
odd turn of phrase by Jennings
Emphasis added. Maybe inadvertent, but they do sound like they were napping, at least.
Duncan certainly hasn’t been.There have been more than “two young men who took their own lives for one unacceptable reason” in the last week. Is this an indicator of how much attention he’s been paying, or an attempt to make things seem less dire than they are? It’s an okay statement as far as it goes, but really, that’s the kind of major detail Duncan should have gotten right–or Jennings should have corrected him on.
Surely there is a need for Foster Care and Social Servicesfor homeless and troubled gay youth,
But frankly, I fail to see what THIS response has to do at all with the original problem with gay students being, what is obvious to me, harrassed instead of rpotected by their guardians (teachers while they are in their care.
Pam, I appreciated the appropriate reference to Columbine, wherein entire communities, near and far, came to the emotional rescue. Please share anything more that we can actually do to spark consciousness within our elected officials.
There is nothing unclear about the utter failure of these schools. They are failures. There is an obvious conflict of interests playing out when Not One Teacher can come forward saying that they know Something, Anything, after having dozens of students and parent to say that they did indeed know of perpetual bullying of a gay student.
It seems that even in the press releases, officials want to say “Oh this is so terribel, so why don’t you all get together and think about what you can do, m-byby”
This needs continued National Exposure, and WE are tho ones who have to take on the task.
I dunno……I think the Duncan statement is pretty spot on. At their core all of the incidents do revolve around one reason: bullying. In some sense, it would almost be a disservice to narrow that to “bullying due to sexual orientation.” As if to send a message that bullying for everything else is OK. I AM glad he called out orientation specifically in the Michigan case. But can live with (and somewhat preferred) that he addressed bullying in general.
That is interesting that you heard of the HHS grant via the WH The grant is very welcome news in and of itself, but the route of delivery of the press release to you really does give the impression of a weak attempt by the WH at “see, we’re not doing nothing”.
.From Kevin Jennings statement
“I hope each of you will consider ways you can help bring bullying to an end and urge you to check out http://www.bullyinginfo.org for useful resources in so doing. ”
I have a suggestion for ways the Obama administration can help bring bullying of members of the LGBT community to an end.
STOP WORKING AGAINST THE RIGHTS OF THE LGBT COMMUNITY
Stop defending DOMA in the courts by comparing gays to pedophiles.
Stop defending DADT in court by saying gays are to offensive for straights to knowingly associate with.
Stop claiming that same-sex relationships aren’t good enough for real marriage rights and should only have civil unions so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of righteous straights.
D’oh..wasn’t doneBut I don’t know if you and cn are correct about there being a slip up regarding the count (since the statement specifies “this week”). Wasn’t one of the deaths last week, and another 2 or 3 weeks ago. I know, it’s splitting hairs…but I’m a little OCD about that kind of thing
What We Need ASAPWe need a president to say, short and sweet:
My Fellow Americans, it’s time to stop treating members of the LGBT community as second class citizens. They deserve all the rights that everyone else in this country has, especially the right to live in safety and not fear exposure, harassment, bullying, or any level of verbal or physical violence. That is fulfilling the promise of freedom that has made America great.”
I know: dream on.
THESE MESSAGES WEREN’T FOR EARS THAT NEED TO HEAR THEM!
How many kids considering hanging themselves, shooting themselves, throwing themselves off bridges because they’re terrorized day after day for being gay/being thought gay have ever heard of Arne Duncan or Kevin Jennings??????
How many of their torturers have?
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These are hollow words coming from an administration that defends DOMA in bigoted termsand has done virtually nothing to repeal DADT. What do they think bullying is, anyway? Would’t throwing people out of the military, destroying their careers and possibly lives, after years of dedicated service purely because of who they are count as bullying????
I’m still okay with thatIf the pressure is making them do the right thing, then it’s just confirmation of what we knew all along: the White House has no moral ground and instead sticks its finger up and tries to figure out how to do damage control on every issue.
Look at the Healthcare Fiasco. Look at the non-repeal of DOMA. Look at the “compromise” to end the “compromise” of DADT–all while defending the constitutionality of DADT in federal court.
It’s all about just how much we’ll put up with and what the minimal incremental improvement in our status in the country is in order to convince us to give money to Democrats, or barring that, at least to vote for them.
Well, in many ways the media coverage is all that’s reallychanged in the last few weeks. Suicides like these have been going on for decades, completely below the media’s radar. There hasn’t really been a rash of suicides; there’s been a rash of suicides finally getting covered. It seems we’ve reached some sort of tipping point where the mainstream is finally recognizing it as a problem.
not really:
you’ll note he didn’t say he was horrified by the suicides themselves, just the media coverage of them. no doubt, that’s not what he actually meant to say, but his freudian slipped, and the truth came a tumblin’ out: the media coverage is far worse than the events themselves, because now the obama education dept. may well be forced to do something, to at least shut the media up.
it’s really just all very annoying.
Actually, we need a President.
sadly the truth is…The military is a lot like high school, in fact its a lot like the boys locker room in high school.
The same harassment, hazing, abuse, assault and more that you see in high school you see in the military.
The harassers, abusers and bullies learn how to do that in high school, they repeat it in the military.
The military has suicides, even in peace time. I’ve stood a lot of watches over people who were troubled and it was SOP to put those found to be GLBT on suicide watch. ‘just in case’
Well, I think these are conjoined issues, actually
But even with Columbinethere were a munber of school shootings prior to that that did receive national attention.
Duncan’s concern with the media coverage is not displaced.
this WH approves of bullyingthis WH approves of bullying…isnt that what they are doing with their QUIT WHINING & VOTE™ campaign?
This is Obama’s HIV/AIDS momentAnd he ain’t doing any better with this one than Reagan did with his.
He can’t bring himself to say anything about it himself, so he delegates it to the Sec of Education, who mentions TWO of the how many cases?
Sorry, I am a little sensitive on this issue esp wrt Tyler Clementi. As a musician myself, and someone who has known gay musicians with very fragile egos, I thank the god I don’t believe in for the fact that my chorus director and his assistant have survived. I just wish Mr Clementi could’ve known there were resources for him if only.
Christ! I am sad today.
He doesn’t talk about two suidices this week.He talks about the media coverage of them being from this week. That is simply inaccurate. The media, unfortunately, have covered FIVE.
So true, we need a real PRESIDENT of the US of A who leads!I am at a lost with what has happened to these young people of our country who have killed themselves because of homophobia. My heart aches with the lost of their precious lives.
Sadly, yet again, we have no leadership from our President to denounce hateful actions of Americans towards GLBT Americans.
Where’s our Truman? Where’s our Roosevelt?
Just when we thought we would have a GREAT DEMOCRAT as US President, we end up having just another corporate President, “constitutional scholar” no less, who has forgotten our great country’s roots of ‘WE THE PEOPLE”.
Well, President Obama’s God is in the mixand he apparently says that we are not equal.
Mr President, you can be outraged as you see politically fit to feign, but the fact remains that blood is upon your handa as well when you said that because of the God used ever so frequently to bludgeon us, we are less than, less qualified to marry, less imporantant a minority.
You Sir, helped to do this to ALL of our dead since you arrived in office, murdered, raped, beaten and suicides
CYA publicity and marketing.That’s all it is. They really don’t care or they would change the tax code to tax all churches and 501(c)(4)s who use more than 5% of their dollars for lobbying or political activity and make them prove it every year with their accounting books wide open and subject to audit 24/7.