U. S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) Photo By Getty Images By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Apr 28 | Minnesota U. S. Senator Al Franken (D) announced Monday that he’ll be introducing a bill to address the issue of bullying that targets LGBT students. During an oversight hearing of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division last Tuesday, April 20th, Franken told Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division;
“The fact is that discrimination and harassment are a fact of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students across the country, yet there is no explicit protection in federal law that bars discrimination and harassment against LGBT students.”
According to Andy Birkey, staff political correspondent for The Minnesota Independent News Service, Franken recounted the case of J.L. v. Mohawk Central School District in Minnesota, where a 14-year-old male student was harassed to the point of violence — he was pushed down a flight of stairs and threatened at knife-point because his fellow students thought he was gay. When his parents complained, school officials said, “Boys will be boys.”
“Unfortunately, this case is hardly unique and a similar case came up in my state,” said Franken. He asked Perez, “Do we need an explicit ban against harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity?”
Perez didn’t answer the question directly, but did say, “Today’s bullies are tomorrows’ civil rights defendants,” citing “horrific” school bullying cases he has prosecuted. “The federal government can make a difference,” he said.
Franken ended his questioning by saying he would work to get federal protections in place. “I would like to work with you on this for specific protections for LGBT kids. It’s a very real thing that there is this bullying in schools.”
During an exchange with testifiers at the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, the Minnesota Senator asked the panel, “What is the best way to create a positive behavioral environment?” Franken then told the panel of education experts;
“There’s something very specific that has been on my mind… LGBT youth being bullied. Right now we have laws that prohibit bullying based on pretty much everything, but not on gender identity and gay and lesbian kids. And the evidence is that gay kids are bullied a lot and that their achievement goes down. There’s a lot of absenteeism and even suicide.”
A member of the panel, George Sugai, a professor of special education at the University of Connecticut, told the Senators that the current system needs to change.
“Our basic response in general to bullying has been a reactive management strategy, zero tolerance, punish the kids, create an environment of control,” he said. “And the literature suggests that if that’s your response, it’s going to be ineffective in supporting those kids or any kids inside the school.”
He said that teaching social skills will greatly improve the environment both for kids at risk for bullying and those at risk for becoming bullies.
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