BREAKING: White House to release new LGBT bullying guidelines to schools

It may have taken two years, but it seems the White House has figured out that Title IX protects students from anti-gay & anti-transgender bullying. Now they’re clearing up for the schools.

Today, the Department of Education will mail letters to all of the nation’s Public School District Superintendents informing them of their duty to craft and enforce policies that prevent anti-gay bullying in America’s public schools. After studying bullying, the administration has realized that anti-gay bullying actually takes the form of gender-discrimination when it takes place peer-to-peer.

We see this all the time. Boys that don’t conform to gender norms and stereotypes are labeled “fags” and “girls” interchangeably. Likewise, anti-lesbian harassment is interchangeable with teasing over a girl’s non-conformity with gender norms.

And now, according to the Department of Education, this violates Federal Law.

Title IX is the law the compels Federally-funded schools to reduce gender discrimination in their schools by treating men and women as equals and by curbing gender-bias. Now, they’ve discovered, it can be interpreted to protect LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT as well.

So what happens? Schools that don’t comply may have some Federal funding cut. This is monumental. Its unlikely that any schools will defy the law. We should instead see some across-the-board efforts to implement anti-bullying programs across the country, and new training for teachers.

The Department of Education will launch and promote a new website for information on bullying called BullyingInfo.org and allow concerned parties to become educated in their own rights, to learn how to file complaints and will allow schools to browse and learn about research-based anti-bullying programs they can implement in their own districts. Eventually the Government will release a guide of “Best Practices” through this site.

This does not mean, however, that schools will have to stop discriminating against students who want to take their same-sex partners to prom–at least not yet. However, the Department of Education is still evaluating the law in this regard. They also say that the new guidelines should give hope to adults and professionals working in school districts when faced with discrimination in the workplace and that they are working with the Department of Justice to fine-tune a system of reporting in this area.

Bottom line: bullying will still continue, but now it’s against the law, and you can do something about it. Schools are more likely to combat bullying than risk a loss of Federal funding. Things really DO get better!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 at 3:59 am and is filed under Politics & Activism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.