Tag: It Gets Better Doc

Concerns emerge over past statements by member of Anoka-Hennepin anti-bullying task force

Brett
by Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio

October 25, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Anoka-Hennepin School District is taking a new look at how it deals with bullying.

A task force, which holds its first meeting tonight, will spend several months evaluating the district’s culture around bullying, to possibly recommend changes in policy.

It is one required piece of a settlement the district entered into eight months ago. Anoka-Hennepin’s neutrality policy prompted lawsuits from several students who were bullied because they are gay or perceived to be gay.

Even as Anoka-Hennepin moves beyond that conflict, past actions by one task force member has some concerned about the process.

Twenty-six people are a part of the district’s task force on bullying. They include teachers, staff, administration, community members and a handful of students.

Tom Heidemann, who chairs the Anoka-Hennepin school board, pieced together the task force from more than 70 applicants.

“We’ll bring together community members and experts to just review how things are going in Anoka-Hennepin and advise the board on how to make things better,” Heidemann said.

Anoka-Hennepin’s neutrality policy required teachers remain neutral when the subject of sexual orientation came up in the classroom. The policy faced intense criticism after six students committed suicide in a span of less than two years. Friends and family of the students say were bullied because of their sexual orientation.

Then, six students sued the district, claiming the policy didn’t protect them from bullying.

The settlement included payments to the students who sued, a requirement that the district better monitor bullying and new anti-bullying protocols be developed with the Department of Justice.

It also required the district to include gay students in assessment and development of the district’s evolving bullying policies.

Bullying task force member Alyssa Beddoe, 17, is a senior at Andover High School.

As a freshman, Beddoe told fellow students she was gay. She lost friends and faced hurtful comments from other students.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of people who just (say) ‘You need to go die,'” Beddoe said. “I’ve dealt with the people who’ve tried to change me to be straight, show me I’m straight, or the people that just don’t want me on the earth anymore because I’m gay.”

Beddoe said things have gotten better in the past couple of years because of the attention paid to bullying, but she still sees need for improvement.

“We have a long way to go, it’s just baby steps. It’s still getting started so it’s better than nothing.”

As a bullying task-force member, Beddoe said she’ll push to get students more involved in anti-bullying efforts, since they are the first to see bullying, before teachers even know it’s happening.

Tammy Aaberg’s 15-year old son, Justin, committed suicide in 2010. He also was bullied because he was gay, she said.

Aaberg hopes the task force finds ways to protect kids like her son.

“I would like to make sure that they adopt better policies and better ways of handling bullying,” she said.

Aaberg applied to be on the task force but was turned down. Now she’s expressing concern about one member of the group, Bryan Lindquist.

Lindquist is part of a local group called the Parent Action League, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has declared a hate group, and intolerant toward gay people.

In spring testimony to the school board, Lindquist referred to homosexuality as a “sexual disorder.” Those statements worry Aaberg.

“I go back and I look at articles and things that he said at board meetings … that’s what concerns me,” Aaberg said. “I’m really worried of what is actually going to happen in this anti-bullying task force.”

Lindquist declined to speak on tape for this story, but in an email said the task force should concern itself with “helping create a safe learning environment for all students,” and not with him.

Heidemann says appointing Lindquist to the task force helped balance out the group.

“He brings a conservative-Christian point of view to the committee and also a commitment to making sure that there’s no bullying and harassment of students in school for any reason,” Heidemann said.

The Anoka-Hennepin bullying task force will meet monthly through the end of the school year. It’s expected to report its finding and recommendations to the school board by June.

Thomson Reuters says Minnesota anti-gay amendment is bad for business

Brett

MINNEAPOLIS -– Media giant Thomson Reuters on Friday said that a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota would be bad for business.

John Shaughnessy, a spokesman for the New York-based business data provider, told reporters Friday that several of the company’s Minnesota-based executives wrote in an email to employees, “We believe the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, if passed, would limit our ability to recruit and retain top talent.”

 

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/07/thomson-reuters-says-minnesota-anti-gay-amendment-is-bad-for-business/

America’s shame: 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT kids

Brett

LOS ANGELES – About 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT, and nearly all homeless youth service providers in the U.S. now serve LGBT youth, according to a comprehensive report on LGBT youth homelessness released Thursday.

Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) respondents indicated that family rejection was a major factor contributing to LGBT youth homelessness, making it the most cited factor. More than half (54 percent) of respondents indicated that abuse in their family was another important factor contributing to LGBT homelessness.

 

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/07/americas-shame-40-percent-of-homeless-youth-are-lgbt-kids/

Simon is new Anoka-Hennepin School Board member

Brett

The Anoka-Hennepin School Board announced Jeff Simon as the new board member to replace Kathy Tingelstad at its meeting Monday, July 9.

Simon, a Coon Rapids resident and member of the district’s Future Focus team, will represent eastern Coon Rapids and southwest Andover until his term expires January 2014.         Tingelstad resigned from the board in March after school board members agreed to settle two lawsuits that challenged the district’s handling of allegations of anti-gay student bullying.

 http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_21037696/new-anoka-hennepin-school-board-member-be-announced?refresh=no

Gay bullying must end

Ross

A Northwestern University researcher just published the first longitudinal study on LGBT youth and suicide. It found that victims of bullying were two and a half times more likely to attempt suicide or hurt themselves. It also showed that even when the kids had supportive figures in their lives, harassment still correlated strongly with suicidal thoughts.

“The vast majority of LGBT youth in our sample had experienced some kind of victimization,” says Dr. Brian Mustanski, the lead author and director of the IMPACT LGBT Health and Development Program. “People had spit on them or yelled at them, threatened or physically attacked them.”

By the time the suicides of September 2010 arrived, the correlation between gay bullying and self-harm was becoming too obvious to ignore.

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Help for Gay and Lesbian Foster Children

Brett

http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20120525-inland-help-for-gay-and-lesbian-foster-children.ece

Anthony was kicked out of a Beaumont foster home because he’s gay. He endured anti-gay taunts from a roommate at a group foster facility.

Now, the 17-year-old says he is in a better place. He has lived with his new foster parents in Temecula for 15 months, and a gay man appointed by a juvenile-court judge as his advocate has become a confidant and friend who is helping Anthony open up about his problems and about issues involving his sexual orientation.

Riverside County’s Court Appointed Special Advocates program has become a state leader in assisting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered children who have been neglected, abused or abandoned and ended up in the foster care system, said Marissa Guerrero, program manager for California CASA, which provides assistance to the 44 CASA agencies in the state.

Judges appoint special advocate volunteers to represent the interests of some foster children in court and visit with them regularly.

CNN to Launch ‘CNN Films’ Features Banner

Brett

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn-films-theatrical-banner_b127784

CNN is planning to launch a new feature film banner called CNN Films that will develop “tentpole” non-fiction films for television and theatrical release, TVNewser has learned.

The plan is for CNN Films to pursue well-known, distinguished documentarians and filmmakers, who will produce the features. The films will air on CNN, as well as in limited theatrical release and at film festivals. The first features produced under the CNN Films banner are expected to debut sometime in 2013.

CNN Films productions are expected to serve as event, tentpole programming, with a handful of new films released under the banner each year. As long as the subject matter is non-fiction, it is fair game for being featured. A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.

CNN underwent a reorganization in its two documentary units back in March, combining them into one department with a focus on acquiring documentaries from outside production companies. CNN will continue to produce and acquire longform programming under the “CNN Presents” and “In America” banners, separately from CNN Films.

CDC-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health-LGBTQ Youth Programs at a Glance

Brett

http://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth-programs.htm

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are at elevated risk for many health risk behaviors, bullying, violence, discrimination, and associated health and mental health outcomes. Recognizing these serious health risks, CDC works with national, state, and local partners to address the health, education, and safety needs of LGBTQ youth.

CDC provides funding for state, territorial, and local education agencies; state health agencies; and tribal governments to conduct the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), which monitors health risk behaviors among U.S. high school students. CDC encourages its sites to add optional questions about same-sex sexual contact and sexual identity to their state, territorial, or local YRBS questionnaires. Collecting such data enables sites to better understand the health and safety risks among sexual minority youth and then adjust prevention priorities accordingly.

During the 2011 YRBS—

  • Five sites asked only about the sex of students’ sexual contacts
  • One site asked only about students’ sexual identity
  • Twenty-one sites asked about both the sex of students’ sexual contacts and about students’ sexual identity

In 2011, CDC analyzed data from YRBS to identify associations between sexual minority status and health risk behaviors. The findings of this analysis are described in a CDC report, “Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health-Risk Behaviors Among Students in Grades 9–12 in Selected Sites—Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance, United States, 2001–2009.” The report documents the disproportionate rates at which sexual minority students experience many health risks, including tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; sexual risk behaviors; and violence.

 

4 Non-Essential TV Networks: Watch Out, Oprah and Mark Burnett

Ross

Winfrey’s painful struggle with OWN raises an equally painful question: Have we finally reached the point of too many networks?

We live in the age of screen creep, in which news, trivia, and ads – mostly ads – pop up in places they never would have just a decade ago. We’re confronted with TV on elevators, in taxicabs, even in public bathrooms.

There are plenty of niche networks — about military history, golf, fishing — that may not strike the average viewer as essential. But at least they’re valuable to their small audiences. When we think of networks that could easily disappear, we think of four that few people would miss.

Two of them – No. 4 and No. 1 — were horrible ideas from the start. The other two — including, we regret to say, OWN — could be great with some changes. As it stands, they try so hard to please everyone that they please almost no one.

#4: McTV

#3: VH1

#2: OWN

#1: Gas Station TV

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