Gay Teen Beaten at School; Witness Records Attack with Cell Phone
Anti-gay bullying reared its head in particularly ugly fashion at an Ohio high school on Oct. 17, when a student lay in wait, then viciously pummeled a gay classmate while other teens looked on and did nothing to stop the attack. One classmate recorded the attack on video using a cellphone. The video has been posted online, ABC News reported on Oct. 28.
"Other students watched as the attacker waited for his victim to arrive in the classroom," the ABC News story said. "He then shoved his prey to the ground, and repeatedly punched him in the face."
"It turns my stomach," the victim's mother said, going on to add, "they did it just because he's a homosexual."
The ABC News report cited his mother as saying that the attacker broke two of her son's teeth and left him with a possible concussion.
"The boy stood there and waited and waited on him," she said, describing the attack. "As soon as he walked in the door, the boy hits. [My son] walks away--'What did I do? Why are they doing this?' and keeps walking away. He turns around and tries to defend himself and then he tries to get away and the boy grabs him and beats the living crap out of him."
The victim also spoke about the attack.
"I covered myself and shielded my body, and he kept hitting," the gay teen told local news station and ABC affiliate WSYX. "Nobody did anything."
The assailant received a three-day suspension from the school. The principal of Union-Scioto High School, the Columbus-area school where the attack took place, told the media that the authorities had filed charges in the case, but also noted that there is no Gay-Straight Alliance at the school.
One national organization that supports the creation of GSAs is the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a safe schools advocacy group headed by Eliza Byard, who addressed reports of the assault.
"We are deeply disturbed to learn of yet another horrifying bullying incident, this time at Union-Scioto High School," Byard stated. "On the tail end of National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month, this brutal attack should be a call to action for everyone in Ohio to ensure that schools are safe for all students."
GSAs give GLBT teens a voice. One function of the student-led clubs is to dispel myths about gays and dissipate tensions around natural variances in human sexuality. But anti-gay conservatives accuse GSAs of being nothing more than a surreptitious means for gays to "inculcate" impressionable youths.
Anti-gay conservatives make similar claims about anti-bullying laws, arguing that students expressing homophobic sentiments out of religious beliefs would be oppressed if such laws extended protections to sexual minorities.
"Currently, an anti-bullying law is pending in Ohio's state legislature, proposing the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity among other enumerated protections to the state's existing anti-bullying law," the ABC article noted.
The victim, whose name was not released in media reports, had suffered harassment and anti-gay bullying for some time prior to the brutal assault. In one instance, the same student who assailed him allegedly posted the message "Check out the definition of a faggot" on the boy's Facebook page.
"Union-Scioto has no policy in place that specifically protects students from being bullied or attacked based on sexual orientation or gender identity," noted Equality Ohio, according to an Oct. 27 article posted at The New Civil Rights Movement.
"The Union-Scioto Local School District does have a policy that prohibits harassment based on sex, race, color, national origin, religion, disability, among others, but it does not specifically protect against harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity," the posting continued.
The site dubbed the incident a case of "stalking," and added, "This is not bullying. This is pre-meditated assault and needs to be handled by the police, not by the school--the school should be calling the cops."
Anti-gay harassment has been cited as a factor in the suicide deaths of a number of GLBT teens over the last year and a half. One recent suicide victim, Jamey Rodemeyer, a Buffalo, NY, area resident, killed himself after enduring--and blogging online about--ongoing bullying. After his death, anti-gay classmates hurled jubilant expressions of approval over his suicide at the teen's sister.
Rodemeyer had made a video for the "It Gets Better" project a few months before taking his own life.
"I promise you, it will get better," Jamey had said in the video message. The "It Gets Better" project is dedicated to offering words of encouragement to LGBT youth who might be driven to suicide by anti-gay messages they receive from bullies at school or from society at large. The project features thousands of messages made by celebrities and everyday people alike, both gay and straight, and was begun in response to the media attention last year that shined a spotlight on the problem of gay teen suicide.
Studies have shown that GLBT youth are more than five times as likely as heterosexual teens to engage in suicidal behavior. What's more, researchers have found evidence that the labeling of teens as being gay is the source of the emotional pain that drives them toward suicide; actual sexual conduct does not seem to have a bearing.
One study showed that teens who thought of themselves as heterosexual even though they had sex with people of the same gender were no more likely than teens who only had sex with partners of the opposite gender to commit suicide.