Feeling a little conflicted and hypocritical, but hear me out on this one

Lesbian teens sue Minn. school over pep fest

This article was a little tough for me, as I started to see things from multiple POVs. Of course, this lead to me rambling :P

On one hand, I really do think it's crap that we STILL have to fight issues of gender and sexual discrimination. No matter what your personal or religious beliefs are regarding gender roles or sexual orientation, the only person who should have a say in those decisions are the individual, and for minors, the individual's parents. (Yes, I know that there are still too many parents who haven't learned tolerance, and probably never will. However, they are still the parents, and that's a separate battle that digresses from this debate.)

Gender roles and sexuality are an issue of personal morals, and do not put people in danger. Allowing society or government to dictate who people can love, based on “traditional” values (ie. Christian) is no different than if those entities dictated whether people could eat pig, if our society and government happened to be predominately Jewish or Muslim.

However, I think the school's reasons for changing things, and thus preventing the lesbian couple from doing this makes sense. The article mentions that the school has already had six students commit suicide, possibly due to being bullied for being gay. Now, these girls might feel they can deal with the bullying they would face, but the school has a legitimate reason to be concerned. It's not fair to the girls, or the students who voted for them, but under current circumstances, this school can't afford to allow this in the face of what has been happening. Making this very grand display, while noble, could possibly cause more harm than good for all of the homosexual students in the area. Smashing a hornet's nest with a big stick might knock it off the tree, but it's also going to send out a swarm of angry hornets that will attack everything in sight. Sometimes subtlety is the better method to reach the end goal.

Obviously change is needed here, but it won't be achieved by shoving it down people's throats. Tolerance is a two way street. The students who don't agree with homosexuality have the right to their opinion, they just don't have the right to make someone miserable because of it. These girls have the right to believe it's wrong to hate someone for being gay, but they don't have the right to antagonize those students for their bigotry.

My opinion sounds hypocritical even to myself, but I honestly can't see what other choice the school really has. It's not right, and it's not fair, that these girls are essentially being punished for their sexuality. Thinking about it, though, it reminds me of a fairly effective punishment I use with my kids. If they're fighting over a toy, and won't play nicely, then I take the toy away from both of them, no matter who had it first. Whoever snatched it needs to learn that you can't just take things, and whoever had it first needs to learn that fighting over it is not the right way to get it back.

Of course, as the parent, once they're over their fit, I try to suggest how they could have dealt with sharing the toy better. This is where the school may be lacking. They need to help these kids find compromise. Help the girls create a student group for gay and lesbian students. Have them work with the guidance office, so that homosexual students would have someone to turn to when being harassed. Work with them and support efforts to teach tolerance and end harassment. It'll take time, but eventually the school won't have to take the toys away anymore.

10 years later, and I'm still not over it..."No Name-Calling Week"

Barns & Noble posted a book they're selling in connection with "No Name-Calling Week." Due to my own experience with bullying, I decided to take a look. I read some of the reviews left for this book, and I have to say, some of them make me really sad. There were comments about how it just seemed unbelievable to them that so many bad things could happen to one person, or that they refused to believe that those kinds of things could happen, and no adult would step in and put a stop to it. Some even suggested that her own attitude encouraged the bullying, in essence saying it was her own fault! Honestly, I would find it far more unbelievable if she HADN'T developed a bitter attitude.

One comment that really got to me mentioned that they couldn't believe that she could find the same kind of bullying in different schools, from different people. From first hand experience, that is completely possible. I was bullied from kindergarten on up. Thankfully, I was never physically bullied, but trust me, the mental and emotional abuse was no less painful than a punch in the face. When my family decided to move to a new house, and thus a new school district, I was ecstatic! I had friends at my old school, but I thought moving to a new school would be a fresh start for me. That first day, all I wanted to do was fit in. That made it even more painful when the same kind of teasing and taunting started all over again. The same old story, just different faces. To this day, I STILL don't know what it was about me.

Day after day, year after year, listening to your peers rip you up and down eats at your soul. I wasn't a crass, cynical, jaded, sarcastic kid in kindergarten. I became that kind of person in response to the world around me. Of course, that didn't do anything to end the bullying, but neither did my desperate attempts to fit in. My days were no different when I was trying to wear "cool" clothes and like the same things everyone else did, than they were when I finally said "to hell with the lot of you," and went Goth. The bullying still hurt, but at least it felt like I could control HOW I was being bullied. We all cope with bullying in different ways. Some collapse in on themselves in misery, and some fight back. In the most extreme of reactions, the victim becomes suicidal or homicidal. For the rest of us, we just dream of the day when it will all be over. Little do we know that, while the bullying may stop, the pain is there forever.

It's been 10 years since I graduated high school, and to my shame, a part of me still can't let go. I know I should just "get over it," but I can't. It still hurts, just thinking about it. I want to know "why?," even now. What did I do? What did I say? Was there anything I could have done that would have made it different? I don't just want these answers for myself. Now that I'm a parent, I'm constantly on the look-out for signs that my children are facing the same kind of torment I did. Maybe if I can figure out what triggered it all, I can save my kids from my own fate.

Bullying is abuse. Mental, emotional and physical assault is just as damaging coming from one's peers as it is if it were abuse by a parent. It wears you down and leaves scars that no amount of time or therapy can make go away.