The Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has released a new study today analyzing the impact of anti-LGBT bullying on middle and high school students who participate in athletics. Though the climate in athletics can be quite toxic, there are still many LGBT students participating, and when they do, they benefit academically from having the experience. Unfortunately, many are dissuaded from participating at all.

Here’s a look at some of the findings:

• LGBT students are about half as likely as their non-LGBT peers to participate in interscholastic sports (23.2 percent vs. 47.8 percent).
• The more involved LGBT students were in athletics, the higher their GPA, with team leaders averaging a 3.4, team members averaging a 3.2, and non-athletes average a 3.0.
• Over a quarter of LGBT student athletes have been harassed or assaulted while playing because of their sexual orientation (27.8 percent) or gender expression (29.4 percent).
• Most students (79.4 percent) felt uncomfortable talking to school athletics staff about LGBT issues.
• Even P.E./gym classes continue to be unsafe spaces for LGBT students, with about half of them reporting bullying or harassment because of their sexual orientation (52.8 percent) or gender expression (50.9 percent).
• As a result, many LGBT students avoid P.E. classes (32.5 percent), locker rooms (39.0 percent), and athletic fields (22.8 percent) out of fear of victimization.

GLSEN’s overall study of school climate for LGBT students found that 82 percent have been verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation. The new results seem to indicate that athletics is an environment where these students might be particularly vulnerable, and yet where they could greatly benefit. Indeed, anti-LGBT climates hurt academic performance and even increase drop-out rates. Advocating for LGBT-inclusive bullying prevention strategies not only protects the safety of students, but increases their ability to succeed in school and beyond.

A new study from the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) provides a novel look into the experience of LGBT youth who live in rural areas and don’t access to the same support structures as those in urban or suburban areas. This isolation leads to heightened incidents of student victimization and an unsafe school climate, which in turn negatively impact students’ academic performance and aspirations for post-secondary education.

Here are some of the chilling findings based on responses from rural LGBT students:

• Victimization based on sexual orientation at school: 87 percent reported being verbally harassed, 45 percent reported being physically harassed, and 22 percent reported being physically assaulted.
• Victimization based on gender expression at school: 68 percent reported being verbally harassed, 31 percent reported being physically harassed, and 16 percent reported being physically assaulted.
• Anti-gay language at school: 91 percent heard “gay” used in a negative way, and 79 percent heard other homophobic remarks (“dyke,” “faggot,” etc.) used frequently or often.
• Lack of school intervention: Only 13 percent reported that school personnel intervened when they heard homophobic language, and only 11 percent reported similar intervention for negative remarks about gender expression.
• Lack of peer support: Half as many rural students (27 percent) reported having a gay-straight alliance compared to suburban (55 percent) and urban (53 percent) students.
• Lack of visibility: Half as many rural students (11 percent) reported having an LGBT-inclusive curriculum, compared to suburban (18 percent) and urban (20 percent) students.

Compared to suburban and urban LGBT students, those living in rural areas felt less safe at school, had less supportive administrators, had less supportive peers, and were less likely to have policies protecting sexual orientation and gender expression.

The new report is based on the data GLSEN originally presented in September, which found troubling rates of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment nationwide. The very policies that would help protect students with anti-bullying programs and education are opposed by conservatives based on “religious liberty” grounds. In states like Michigan and Tennessee, the ruling Republican majorities have even tried to pass “license to bully” bills guaranteeing a place for anti-LGBT harassment in schools.

NARTH's Dr. Julie Hamilton was introduced as an "expert."

Dr. Drew was not the only television doctor talking about ex-gay therapy on Wednesday. Dr. Oz dedicated his entire show to the “controversy,” providing ample time to those who profit from the harmful therapy to promote their quackery unchallenged. Representatives from NARTH and People Can Change were presented as “experts” who were offering one side of a debate that the medical community has already settled.

GLAAD, GLSEN, and PFLAG all condemned the episode, explaining how thoroughly the practice of ex-gay therapy had been debunked. GLSEN Executive Director Dr. Eliza Byard participated in the show, but explained that she and other LGBT advocates were not informed NARTH would be represented — let alone featured. During his final thought, Dr. Oz argued that he believed the sides needed to talk to each other, then followed up on his blog that only after the show did he have the epiphany that therapists should affirm gay identities:

Some guests argued that they have been changed thru these treatments, but I was overwhelmed by the pain of individuals hurt by the experience.  After listening to both sides of the issue and after reviewing the available medical data, I agree with the established medical consensus.  I have not found enough published data supporting positive results with gay reparative therapy and I have concerns about the potentially dangerous effects when the therapy fails, especially when minors are forced into treatments.

My biggest epiphany occurred after hearing where the opposing groups found some common ground. The guests who appeared on my show on either side of this debate agreed that entering into any therapy with guilt and self-hate is a major error. Trying to change who you are instead of loving who you are leads to broken spirits and broken hearts. Encouraging self-acceptance is the only way to help alleviate the shame experienced by those who are struggling with their sexuality – and help them reach a place where who they are matches who they want to be.

It should not require an open, unchallenged airing of harmful lies to agree with the established medical consensus. There is no way for self-acceptance and ex-gay therapy to coexist; NARTH and others rely upon shame. Their business depends upon clients having “unwanted sexual attractions” and believing the faulty promise that the attractions can be treated. Because of the visibility of his show and the expertise entrusted in him by his viewers, Dr. Oz performed a massive disservice by treating the issue of ex-gay therapy as an open question.

Clips of the entire episode, as well as post-show reflections from the guests, are available online.

Every April, conservative social groups rally against the Day of Silence, when students across the country protest anti-LGBT bullying by remaining silent while at school. Now, though, they are hypocritically endorsing a silent protest against a woman’s right to get an abortion, known as the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) explains that a silent protest is free speech:

TEDESCO: Students have First Amendment rights to engage in speech activities. Certainly remaining silent to raise awareness about a social issue qualifies. [...] I think the most important thing is to understand that school officials think that the abortion issue is sensitive and could be offensive to people. And lots of times, school officials just wrongly think that they can shut down a speech activity because they think it’s going to be offensive to someone.

That same organization, ADF, sought to “shatter the silence” of GLSEN’s Day of Silence (DoS), instead encouraging “dialogue” — in particular, the faulty idea that homosexuality is a choice. Other anti-gay groups chastise the DoS as “evil propaganda” and “child abuse,” calling on schools to ban it because it’s simply a “cover for the promotion of homosexuality.” A coalition of groups, including the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel, encourage parents to remove their students from school that day, emphasizing that students “do NOT have a right to remain silent during class time if a teacher asks you to speak.”

But for the issue of abortion, this form of protest is perfectly acceptable “with teachers’ permission.” This dichotomy is the perfect example of conservatives’ hypocrisy: attempting to inhibit speech they disagree with but protect it when they support it.

Every two years, the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network conducts a school climate survey to assess the experience of LGBT young people across the country. Today, the group released its report from 2011, and though there is definitely marked improvement since the 2009 study, LGBT students still face very high levels of bullying and victimization. Here are some of the key findings:

• 81.9 percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 38.3 percent reported being physically harassed, and 18.3 percent reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.
• 63.9 percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 27.1 percent reported being physically harassed, and 12.4 percent reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression.
• 84.9 percent of LGBT students heard “gay” used in a negative way (e.g., “that’s so gay”) and 71.3 percent heard homophobic remarks (e.g., “dyke” or “faggot”) frequently or often at school.
• 6 in 10 LGBT students (63.5 percent) reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; and 4 in 10 (43.9 percent) felt unsafe because of their gender expression. 80 percent of transgender students reported feeling unsafe at school because of their gender expression.

In addition to these high rates of negative experiences, the study also found a correlation between how safe and included students felt and how well they performed academically:

• Nearly one third of LGBT students (29.8 percent) reported skipping a class at least once and 31.8 percent missed at least one entire day of school in the past month because of safety concerns.
• The reported grade point average of students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression was lower than for students who were less often harassed (2.9 vs. 3.2).
• Having a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) in school was related to more positive experiences for LGBT students, including: hearing fewer homophobic remarks, experiencing less victimization because of sexual orientation and gender expression, being less likely to feel unsafe because of their sexual orientation (54.9 percent of students with a GSA vs. 70.6 percent of other students) and having a greater sense of belonging to their school community.
• Students in schools with an LGBT-inclusive curriculum, i.e. one that included positive representations of LGBT people, history and events, heard fewer homophobic remarks, were less likely to feel unsafe because of their sexual orientation (43.4% of students with an inclusive curriculum vs. 63.6% of other students), were more likely to report that their peers were accepting of LGBT people (67.0% vs. 33.0%) and felt more connected to their school.
• Compared to students at school with a generic policy that did not include protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, students attending schools with a comprehensive anti-bullying policy that included specific protections heard fewer homophobic remarks, experienced lower levels of victimization related to their sexual orientation, were more likely to report that staff intervened when hearing homophobic remarks and were more likely to report incidents of harassment and assault to school staff.

School climate is getting better, but only slightly. The programs and policies that are supposed to make a difference are making a difference, but are still not prevalent enough: only 45.7 percent had a GSA, 16.8 percent had an LGBT-inclusive curriculum, and 7.4 percent had a comprehensive anti-bullying policy. These are exactly the kinds of effective interventions anti-gay conservatives are trying to block. More must be done to open up discussions and schools and help these young people feel authentic about who they are.

Conservatives have been outraged about the passage of California’s FAIR Education Act (SB 48) last year, which mandates that schools develop curricula that are LGBT inclusive. Last year, they attempted to challenge it with a referendum, but failed. Now, they have failed again to overturn the law with a ballot initiative. LGBT-inclusive education isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

It’s important to remember the significance of SB 48. Anti-gay forces in this country regularly allege that homosexuality is a threat to children, encouraging parents to feel like they need to protect their children from learning about even the existence of gay people, lest they be “indoctrinated” or even molested or “recruited.” Consider the situation in Erie, Illinois, where parents objected to a children’s book that on one page pointed out that some families include same-sex parents. The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) argued that through GLSEN’s inclusive curriculum, students could be “indoctrinated into homosexual behavior.” Here is a quick recap of other negative responses to the FAIR Education Act:

- RANDY THOMASSON: “Realize that the raft of school sexual indoctrination mandates imposed on all children in California government schools amounts to mental molestation.”

- Signature collectors said that overturning SB 48 would protect children from child molesters.

- The campaign to overturn the law argued that kids will learn about Chaz Bono instead of George Washington.

- NOM’S JOHN EASTMAN: Evil will be with us always, and it requires constant vigilance to defeat… We need to be involved in the immediate defense of threats against marriage, but also take a long-range view by educating the next generation about the importance of the issues we’re confronting.

But despite the backlash against the law, which hasn’t even been implemented in all school yet, research has shown it will make an important difference. GLSEN analyzed data from its 2009 school climate survey and found that having LGBT-inclusive curricula helped students feel safer, experience less victimization, miss less school, and define their peers as accepting. The California Safe Schools Coalition similarly found that inclusive curricula helped students perform better academically and feel more connected to their schools. Conservatives know that learning the basics about sexuality is the key to ending anti-gay stigma, which is why they stand opposed at every opportunity.

In some ways, anti-gay hate groups have polished their rhetoric over the years, but often times they remind that they still believe the same old tired myths about homosexuality. At the core of this mythology is the belief that homosexuality is chosen, and thus it must be coerced from young people. That’s exactly what the Alliance Defense Fund believes was happening in Erie, Illinois.

The Erie Community Unit School District had adopted some curriculum resources from GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. Parents complained about one book in particular, Todd Parr’s “The Family Book,” which mentions on one page that “some families have two moms or two dads.” The controversy that erupted when the school board elected to remove that book and all other GLSEN materials reignited the national conservative war against GLSEN — a war against LGBT youth and the children of same-sex families.

This week, for no apparent reason except to prolong the conflict, the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund issued a legal memo supporting the Illinois school district. ADF’s attorney Jeremy Tedesco explained why he believes GLSEN’s materials are dangerous:

TEDESCO: Public schools should not be coerced by outside groups into indoctrinating students into homosexual behavior by exposing them to inappropriate sexual materials. Schools are supposed to be places of learning, not places where schools push propaganda on students. The school is right under these circumstances to prohibit access to the GLSEN materials and not cave to the ACLU’s demands.

By this logic, any kid who comes to school and mentions that she has two daddies is “indoctrinating” her classmates into “homosexual behavior.” The claims are simply outlandish. Having same-sex parents is neither inappropriate nor sexual, but Tedesco’s comments reflect how conservatives insist on equating anything gay with sex.

GLSEN’s mission has always been to make sure that students feel “valued and respected” regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This means creating visibility and education to counter the ignorance and stigma present in society that has been clearly demonstrated to harm students. ADF, the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council — all of whom have come to Erie’s defense — are intent on scaring parents by capitalizing on their own lack of education about sexuality. By demonizing GLSEN, they believe they can maintain the toxic climate in schools and somehow discourage young people from “becoming” LGBT. After decades of trying to erase LGBT people, all they’ve done is create harm, but they persist with their lies nevertheless.

A coalition of national groups, led by the American Jewish Committee and Religious Freedom Education Project, have released new “guidelines” for public schools that attempt to walk the line between combating bullying and protecting religious speech.  The guidelines themselves are not particularly specific, but they seem to suggest that religious rhetoric should not be curtailed in anyway, regardless of how damaging or disruptive it might be to those who “disagree” with it:

With respect to sexual orientation and behavior, one student’s call for legalization of same-sex marriage may be perceived by another student as a challenge to his or her deeply held religious beliefs. Conversely, one  student’s expression of his or her religious convictions concerning what he or she  regards as sinful sexual behavior will be perceived by another student as suggesting that gay and lesbian students have no place in the school. A student may wear a T-shirt proclaiming “Straight Pride” to counter another student’s “Gay Pride” T-shirt, or vice versa.[...]

When confronting one student’s claim that another student’s speech conveying an idea is harassment and bullying, school officials should consider, time and circumstances permitting, explaining on an age appropriate basis, that disagreement about an idea is not necessarily a personal attack; that some students’ faiths may require them to express their views publicly; that students have a right to disagree with the view of other students or the school and to express that disagreement; and that the most effective response to an idea one disagrees with is often to express a contrary idea, not censorship. Suppression of speech should be the last, not first, resort.

The rhetoric in this document is troubling, because it ignores the current context for how prevalent anti-gay bullying currently is in schools, and how particularly damaging research has shown it to be. Rather, these guidelines suggest that “disagreements” are a two-way street — that a religious condemnation of homosexuality is equivalent in effect to a student’s opposing position defending gay people. This is absurd and completely ignores how vulnerable young people in the throws of coming out can be to such anti-gay viewpoints.

As documented in The Good News Club, conservative Christians are proactively encouraging anti-gay evangelism within schools. It’s unsurprising that among the endorsers of these guidelines are Christian Educators Association International, the Christian Legal Society, and the National Association of Evangelicals. Noticeably absent was GLSEN or any group that advocates for the LGBT community. These organizations are within their right to defend religious expression, but to minimize the impact of anti-gay bullying by conflating “condemnation” with “disagreement” is dangerously disingenuous. The key to reducing anti-gay bullying is training about LGBT issues, not openly humoring religious reproach while ignoring the harm it causes.