Will the White House Anti-Bullying Conference Yield Any Results?

There has been much media hoopla in some quarters over the White House anti--bullying conference which has provided an opportunity for pretty sound bites, but will anything actually come form it? It seems bullying is rampant - aid in part by the Internet which allows bullies to inflict torment on more of a 24/7 basis - yet in most areas efforts to implement anti-bullying policies with real teeth (and which specifically include anti-gay bullying prohibitions) go down to defeat as Republican lawmakers tremble before Christianists who want to be able to denigrate and marginalize LGBT individuals whenever and wherever possible. Virginia is a case in point. Anything that the coven of Christofascists at The Family Foundation perceive to include protections based on sexual orientation will be vigorously oppose regardless of whether or not polls show that a significant majority of Virginians support protections. The GOP controlled House of Delegate's recent killing of a bill to protect state employees is a case in point. The Family Foundation merely sends out messages through its cancer like network of far right churches and the Republicans soon are wetting themselves in fear of the Christianist attacks they will face from religious extremists who have nothing but disdain for the civil liberties of others. The Washington Blade looks at this week's White House conference. Personally, I am not hopeful that we will see hard hitting results. Here are some story highlight:
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President Obama on Thursday opened the doors of the White House to anti-bullying advocates for a conference in which participants discussed harassment of students and devised strategies to curtail bullying.
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In remarks starting off the conference, Obama said if the conference had one goal, it would be dispel the myth that bullying is “a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up.” “It’s not,” he said. “Bullying can have destructive consequences for our young people.
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During his remarks, Obama noted that students who are gay are among the types of children who often face bullying at school. “A third of middle school and high school students have reported being bullied during the school year,” Obama said. “Almost 3 million students have said they were pushed, shoved, tripped, even spit on. It’s also more likely to affect kids that are seen as different, whether it’s because of the color of their skin, the clothes they wear, the disability they may have, or sexual orientation.”
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Dan Savage, founder of the “It Gets Better” online video campaign aimed at helping troubled LGBT teens, said the conference was of “tremendous symbolic importance” because it identified bullying as a national problem, but said more could be done with the issue of parents being the bullies of LGBT youth.
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“What was never addressed is when the parents are the bullies,” Savage said. “LGBT kids whose parents reject them are eight times likelier to attempt suicide; kids who are LGBT are four times. It literally doubles the risk of the already quadrupled risk of suicide for LGBT kids when their families reject them.”