Gay Teens Get Harsher Punishments Than Straights

Sadly, I cannot say that I am shocked by the findings of a new study that found that gay and lesbian teens in the United States are about 40 percent more likely than their straight peers to be punished by schools, police and the courts. Not after my personal experience in my divorce - and those of a number of friends - where the judges seemed particularly vengeful against gays for "choosing to be gay." Shockingly, in my own divorce a conservative judge nominated by former Governor George Allen described being gay as a "choice." As this study revealed, this same anti-gay, religious based discrimination is falling on LGBT teens. The full study results can be found here in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (a legitimate organization unlike the faux group cited by FRC). The Washington Post has a story on these unfortunate findings. Here are highlights:
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The research, described as the first national look at sexual orientation and teen punishment, comes as a spate of high-profile bullying and suicide cases across the country have focused attention on the sometimes hidden cruelties of teen life.
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The study, from Yale University, adds another layer, finding substantial disparities between gay and straight teens in school expulsions, arrests, convictions and police stops. The harsher approach is not explained by differences in misconduct, the study says.
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"The most striking difference was for lesbian and bisexual girls, and they were two to three times as likely as girls with similar behavior to be punished," said Kathryn Himmelstein, lead author of the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.
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Stacey Horn, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, called the study important and compared the findings to racial disparities in criminal sentencing. "To me, it is saying there is some kind of internal bias that adults are not aware of that is impacting the punishment of this group," she said.
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The results showed that, for similar misconduct, gay adolescents were roughly 1.25 to 3 times more likely to be sanctioned than their straight peers. The sexual-orientation disparity was greatest for girls. Girls who identified themselves as lesbian or bisexual experienced 50 percent more police stops and reported more than twice as many juvenile arrests and convictions as other teen girls in similar trouble, the study said.
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"This is a symptom of school administrators, teachers, court officials, police officers - anyone who works with youth - not necessarily being equipped to handle the challenges" faced by the teens in their care, he said. "It's much easier to punish the youth than to work with them and figure out why they may keep getting in fights and what is leading to this behavior."
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Jody Marksamer, a staff attorney and youth project director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said the study brings data to what advocates have seen for years: that biases, overt and subtle, often play out in courts, in schools and with police.

Resegregation Now

The U. S. Supreme Court decision yesterday with respect to school integration issues should be a wake up call to Black Americans of what the Christianist version of America will look like. Gays are NOT the only targets of these false Christians, who long to restore America to their perverted version of the early 1950's when gays were hidden deep in the closet, Blacks were second-class citizens, and Hispanics and Asians were not much better off than Blacks. One only needs to read the web sites of the leading groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, etc. These organizations are descretely racist, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, etc. They are against ANYONE not just like themselves. Today's New York Times lead editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/opinion/29fri1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) hits this huge step backward head on.

The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation’s schools to integrate. Yesterday, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.

Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.

Yesterday, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the majority’s fifth vote, reined in the ruling somewhat by signing only part of the majority opinion and writing separately to underscore that some limited programs that take race into account are still acceptable. But it is unclear how much room his analysis will leave, in practice, for school districts to promote integration. His unwillingness to uphold Seattle’s and Louisville’s relatively modest plans is certainly a discouraging sign.

In an eloquent dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer explained just how sharp a break the decision is with history. The Supreme Court has often ordered schools to use race-conscious remedies, and it has unanimously held that deciding to make assignments based on race “to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society” is “within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities.”

Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for “federalism,” or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., programs. So did their supposed opposition to “judicial activism.” This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.

The nation is getting more diverse, but by many measures public schools are becoming more segregated. More than one in six black children now attend schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority. This resegregation is likely to get appreciably worse as a result of the court’s ruling.

There should be no mistaking just how radical this decision is. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said it was his “firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” He also noted the “cruel irony” of the court relying on Brown v. Board of Education while robbing that landmark ruling of much of its force and spirit. The citizens of Louisville and Seattle, and the rest of the nation, can ponder the majority’s kind words about Brown as they get to work today making their schools, and their cities, more segregated.